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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMEKICA. 



Leaves of Healing. 



GATHERED BY 

KATHARINE PAINE SUTTON. 



To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the Tree of Life 
which is in the Paradise of God. 

And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 



BOSTON: 

AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION, , rt , , 

/sty//) x 

25 Beacon Street. 



1892. 



I 






oo 



Copyright, i8g2 i 
By American Unitarian Association, 



The L,u*r^k¥ 
of Congress 



WASHINGTON 



.-f-„ 



/ 



^Inibrrstts Press : 

John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



TO 

3Tfje helpers anli dealers 

FROM WHOM THESE LEAVES HAVE BEEN GATHERED, 

THIS LITTLE BOOK IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED ; 

AND TO 

Wqt Sorrowing, to tije OTearg anti %eabs4atint, 

WITH THE EARNEST HOPE THAT THEY MAY FIND HEREIN 
NEW INSPIRATION, STRENGTH, AND PEACE. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

I. Life's Victories n 

II. Death's Ministry 61 

III. Immortality ........ 81 

IV. The Family on Earth and in Heaven 123 
V. Eternal Goodness 143 

VI. The Father's Will 155 

VII. Aspiration 167 

VIII. The Perfect Trust 183 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. 



The compiler remembers in her work, with pleas- 
ure, the interest and sympathy of many, — authors, 
publishers, those engaged in post-office mission ser- 
vice, — and of some who have gathered the ripe fruits 
of suffering : she acknowledges, with others, courtesies 
extended by Houghton, Mifflin, & Co. for selections 
from Emerson, Lowell, Longfellow, Whittier, Sill, 
Mrs. Whitney, Alice Cary, Lucy Larcom, Nora Perry, 
and others ; by Roberts Brothers, from Drs. Hedge 
and Allen, and Messrs. Hosmer, Gannett, Chadwick, 
Mrs. Jackson, Susan Coolidge, and others ; by George 
H. Ellis, from Messrs. Savage, Merriam, and others; 
by Charles H. Kerr & Co., from Messrs. Blake, Gan- 
nett, Jones, and Mrs. Marean ; by the Universalist 
Publishing House, from Dr. Chapin, and from " Voices 
of the Faith ; " by Dr. J. Straub, from Dr. H. W. 
Thomas ; by Fords, Howard, & Hulbert, from Dr. 
H. W. Beecher in "Comforting Thoughts;" by 
Charles Scribner's Sons, from Dr. J. G. Holland ; 
by James Pott & Co., from Ugo Bassi ; by Lee and 
Shepard, from Dr. Collyer ; by Macmillan & Co., from 
Mr. Winter ; by D. Appleton & Co., from Mr. Bryant : 
and not least she acknowledges in the undertaking 
the sympathy and ever ready help of her husband, to 
whose judgment in selecting and especially in arrang- 
ing these Leaves she is greatly indebted. 

Brooklyn, Conn , March, 1892. 



LIFE'S VICTORIES. 



LEAVES OF HEALING. 



LIFE'S VICTORIES. 

Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory! — 
i Cor. xv. sj. 

He hath torn, and he will heal us ; he hath smitten, 
and he will bind us up. After two days will he revive 
us ; on the third day he will raise us up, and we shall 
live before him. — Hosea vi. i, 2. 



\ 17 HAT shall we call the real things, by and by, 
when the vision shall have had divine anoint- 
ing, — when we shall name things right ? — our 
little victories, our successes, our joys which 
were hardly large enough to be consecrated ; 
the lessons from which at first we shrank and 
called them sorrows, or even calamities, but 
which carried us along toward larger fellowship 
and quicker contact with the things that abide ? 
I know not; but this I know, that deepening 



12 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

experience greatly reverses some of the decisions 
which we made earlier on the way. And so I love 
to think we shall one day be able to spell out 
some grand words with the letters we are learn- 
ing with such painful labor now ! 

Stephen H. Camp. 



H^HE teachers in God's great school are many. 

A Joy and sorrow, love and loss, daily work, 

household tenderness, health, sickness, strength, 

helplessness, — one by one they come, solemn 

figures, some with radiant faces, some veiled and 

shrouded. Each speaks its word of command : 

"Be glad," " Be patient," "Be faithful," "Strive," 

"Lie still and wait." Often we break in upon 

the lesson with an importunate demand, " Show 

me the end ! " But each teacher, grave and tender, 

says only, "Do this that I bid thee." The full 

answer may be a long time in coming. And yet, 

all the time, God is so near ! For the present 

want we may always find Him sufficient. ... Go 

forth to work, to serve, to love ! This little life 

passes quickly away. Its shadows and sorrows 

are for a moment ; its virtues, its victory, its 

peace, are of the eternal. 

George S. Merriam. 



LIFE'S VICTORIES. 1 3 

n^HE human soul is purified and exalted by 
trial and grief. Life itself has a new charm 
for him who has trodden its depths as well as 
its heights. The keenness of our suffering in- 
creases the intensity of our joy. Yes, there is a 
meaning in tears, a discipline in darkness, and 
our griefs are our glory. Therefore, when your 
dearest hopes are disappointed, when your faith 
in man is tried by bitterest ingratitude, or you 
are cast upon the bed of sickness, oh, do not 
despair ! for these are the divine processes by 
which your nobler self is developed, by which 
the crude bullion of your nature, purified in the 
flames of tribulation, is freshly minted with the 
image and superscription of a perfect manhood. 

Charles W. Wendte. 



A S I recall the personal history of those I know, 
^~*- I see how universal is disappointment. But 
it has not made you more melancholy and less 
manly men ; life is not thereby the less a bless- 
ing and the more a load. With no sorrows you 
would be more sorrowful. For all the sorrows 
that man has faithfully contended with he shall 
sail into port deeper fraught with manliness. The 
wife and mother at thirty years of age imprisoned 



14 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

in her chair, her hands all impotent to wipe a tear 
away, does not suffer for nothing. She has there- 
by been taught to taste the fruits of sweeter com- 
munion with God. These disappointments are 
rounds in the ladder whereby we climb to heaven. 
Sorrow takes you on her wings and bears you up 
higher than before, to a new communion with 
your Father, that you may receive great inspira- 
tion from him. Theodore Parker. 



GOD'S angels come to us disguised; 
Sorrow and sickness, poverty and death, 
One after other lift their frowning masks, 
And we behold the seraph's face beneath, 
All radiant with the glory and the calm 
Of having looked upon the front of God. 
With every anguish of our earthly part 
The spirit's sight grows clearer : this was meant 
When Jesus touched the blind man's lids with clay. 
James Russell Lowell. 



'"P IS sorrow builds the shining ladder up, 

A Whose golden rounds are our calamities, 
Whereon our firm feet planting, nearer God 
The spirit climbs, and hath its eyes unsealed. 

James Russell Lowell. 



LIFE'S VICTORIES. 1 5 



THE DARK ANGEL. 

COUNT each affliction, whether light or grave, 
God's messenger sent down to thee. Do thou 
With courtesy receive him : rise and bow ; 
And ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave 
Permission first his heavenly feet to lave ; 
Then lay before him all thou hast ; allow 
No cloud of passion to usurp thy brow 
Or mar thy hospitality ; no wave 
Of mortal tumult to obliterate 
Thy soul's marmoreal calmness. Grief should be 
Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate, 
Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free ; 
Strong to consume small troubles ; to commend 
Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to 
the end. 

Aubrey de Vere. 



A I 7 HAT difference did it make to Christ, whether 
in the wilderness he did fierce battle with 
temptation ; or sat on the green slope to teach 
the people and send them home as if God had 
dropped upon their hearts amid the shades of 
evening ; whether he stood over the corpse, and 
looking on the dark eyes, said, " Let there be 
light," and the curtain of the shadow of death 
drew up \ or saw the angel of duty approach him- 



1 6 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

self in the dress of the grave, and on the mourn- 
ful " Come away," tendered his hand and was 
meekly led ; whether his walk was over strewn 
flowers, or beneath the cross too heavy to be 
b3rne, amid the cries of " Hosanna," or the mur 
derous shout ? The difference was all of pain ; 
none was there of conscience, of trust, of power, 
of love. Let there be a conscious affiliation with 
God ; and as he pervadeth all things, a unity is 
imparted to life, and a stability to the mind, which 
put character and will above the reach of circum- 
stance ; a current of pure and strong affections, 
fed by the fount of bliss, pours from hidden and 
sunlit heights, and winds through the open plains 
and dark ravines of life, till its murmurs fall into 
the everlasting deep. James Martineau. 

SPIKENARD. 

WHAT was the box of spikenard, Lord, 
Which Mary brought, and at thy feet 
Broke, and the ointment on thee poured, 
The while thou sat'st with them at meat ? 

The house with the sweet smell was rilled, 
And all the chambers of the years 
Are fragrant with those odors spilled, 
And tender with that dew of tears. 



LIFE'S VICTORIES. \J 

O Lord, do I not likewise bring 
Before thee, as I lowly kneel, 
My costly grief, — that hidden thing, — 
And for thee only break the seal ? 

Thou seest, human as thou art, 
Yet glorified in God again, 
The broken box, — a human heart ; 
The precious oil, — its chrism of pain ! 

Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney. 



TF you say, " I am hedged about, I can do noth- 
ing; I fain would help but I cannot," — your 
very longing is a help. "They also serve who 
only stand and wait." It is never true that we 
are not helpers ; where the fervent heart is, there 
is the servant of God, and unto him comes ever 
with the work the reward. He is still and strong 
in God, because he is a co-worker with God, and 
his life holds for itself a secret which is not known 
to another, — he has come in his very work to the 
rest that remaineth. Robert Collyer. 



r^ OD has placed no being in a barren soil ■ no 
^^ one where he may not find the elements of 
immortal life ; none where through perfect fidelity 
to its condition, its roots may not reach out to 



1 8 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

embrace the earth, and spread out branches and 
leaves to heal and overshadow it. Thus Charlotte 
Bronte's life was like an acorn dropped in the cleft 
of a rock — a condition as hard as infelicity could 
make it. For a time its lateral growth was choked 
by its grim surroundings ; but at last its roots 
struck down so deep that they underran the rock, 
and then reached outward to enrich themselves 
from the treasures of the whole earth. And thus 
it may be with every life, if it is perfectly faithful 
and true to the condition in which it is placed. 
It may grow outward into the possession of all 
that remains for the children of God. 

Nahor Augustus Staples. 

Y\ TE seek to be delivered from pain and sorrow, 
* v and God designs to deliver us. Vainly we 
seek, but he accomplishes. Our end is not mis- 
taken, but we mistake the means. We seek deliv- 
erance by taking away; he gives deliverance by 
adding : — 

" 'T is life of which our nerves are scant, 
More life, and fuller, that we want." 

James Hinton. 

TT is a wonderful story. Job and his friends spec- 
ulate all about the mystery, and their conclu- 
sions from their premises are entirely correct ; but 



LIFE'S VICTORIES. 1 9 

they have forgotten to take in the separate sov- 
ereign will of God, as working with a great purpose 
in the man's life, by which he is to be lifted into 
a grander reach of insight and experience than 
ever he had before. Job said, " I suffer; I am in 
darkness and disappointment and pain, because it 
is fate." Job's friends said, " No, you suffer be- 
cause you have sinned." They were both wrong 
and all wrong. He suffered because that was the 
divine way of bringing him out of his self-satisfied 
content; and when, through suffering, that was 
done, he said, " I have heard of thee with mine 
ears, but now mine eye seeth thee." There is a 
bird, it is said, that will never learn the song his 
master will have him sing, while his cage is full of 
light. He listens and learns a snatch of this, a 
trill of that, a polyglot of all the songs in the 
grove, but never a separate and entire melody of 
his own. But the master covers his cage, — makes 
the way all dark about him ; then he will listen to 
the one song he has to sing ; and try and try and 
try again, until at last his heart is full of it. Then, 
when he has caught the melody, the cage is un- 
covered. When there is light on the song there is 
no need for darkness on the way. 

Friends, if I had never gone into darkened 
rooms, where the soul stands at the parting of the 



20 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

worlds; or sat down beside widows and little 
children, when the desire of their eyes was taken 
away with a stroke ; or grasped the hands of strong 
men when all they had toiled for was gone, — 
nothing left but honor ; or ministered to men 
mangled on the battle-field beyond all telling; 
and heard in all these places where darkness was 
on the way, melodies, melodies that I never heard 
among the commonplaces of prosperity, — I could 
not be so sure as I am that God often darkens the 
way that the melody may grow clear and entire in 
the soul. 

Then, if this man could have known, — as he 
sat there in the ashes, bruising his heart on this 
problem of Providence, — that in the trouble that 
had come upon him he was doing what one man 
may do to work out the problem for the world, he 
might again have taken courage. No man lives 
to himself. Job's life is but your life and mine 
written in larger text. What we all are doing as 
we stand in our lot, steady to our manliness or our 
womanliness in our black days, is to tell in its 
measure on the life and faith of every good man 
coming after us, though our name may be forgot- 
ten. ... So then, though we may not know what 
trials wait on any of us, we can believe that, as the 
days in which Job wrestled with his dark maladies 



LIFE'S VICTORIES. 21 

are the only days that make him worth remem- 
brance, and but for which his name had never 
been written in the book of life, so the days 
through which we struggle, finding no way, but 
never losing the light, will be the most significant 
we are called to live. Robert Collyer. 

'"PHE compensations of calamity are made ap- 
parent to the understanding also, after long 
intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel 
disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, 
seems at the moment unpaid loss and unpayable. 
But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force 
that underlies all facts. The death of a dear 
friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing 
but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect 
of a guide or genius ; and the man or woman who 
would have remained a sunny garden-flower, with 
no room for its roots and too much sunshine for 
its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect 
of the gardener is made the banian of the forest, 
yielding shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods of 
men. Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

TMD not Jesus know, and might he not speak of 

the way to the Father? Surely if we still 

take offence at God for his yoke or for his refusals, 



22 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

for burdens or for disappointments, it is only be- 
cause we separate ourselves from the life of the 
Son of Man, who knew them all and found no 
offence in them. Might, think we, a Son of God 
have taken offence at the Father for treatment so 
little to be expected, — a lowly and suffering place, 
personal humiliations and contempt, wounded 
hopes, fruitless labors, agonies of lonely apprehen- 
sion, the desertion of followers, public rejection 
and mock homage, jeers, insults, and a death of 
shame ? If he took none, who can be justified in 
taking any? We do not mean that in his life were 
all circumstantial experiences in which each may 
find his own, but that his life was the perfect way 
of life, that he knew every class of spiritual diffi- 
culty, every kind of natural cloud floating between 
God and man ; by meeting and dissolving which 
he earned a Deliverer's right to say to all Human- 
ity, in the name of a representative Child of the 
Heavenly Father : " Come unto me, all ye that 
labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 
Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, and ye 
shall find rest unto your souls ; for my yoke is easy 
and my burden is light." 

John Hamilton Thom. 



LIFE'S VICTORIES. 2$ 

CEEING that many glory after the flesh, I will 
^ glory also. And if I needs must glory, I will 
glory of the things which concern mine infirmities. 
Not that I speak in respect of want : for I have 
learned in whatsoever state I am, therein to be 
content. I know how to be abased and I know 
also how to abound : in everything and in all 
things have I learned the secret both to be filled 
and to be hungry, both to abound and to be in 
want. I can do all things in him that strength - 
eneth me. For he hath said unto me, My grace is 
sufficient for thee : for my power is made perfect 
in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather 
glory in my weaknesses that the strength of Christ 
may rest upon me. Wherefore I take pleasure in 
weaknesses, in injuries, in necessities, in persecu- 
tions, in distresses, for Christ's sake ; for when I 
am weak, then am I strong. And not only so, but 
let us also rejoice in our tribulations : knowing 
that tribulation worketh patience ; and patience 
probation ; and probation hope ; and hope putteth 
not to shame ; because the love of God hath been 
shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit 
which was given unto us. 

Paul. 



24 LEA VES OF HEALING. 

TNSTEAD of regarding afflictions as judgments 
^ and tokens of God's displeasure, Paul, in the 
light of Christianity, deems them as means of 
greater attainments in the true life of the soul. 
He proceeds to point out the sequence of Christian 
experiences, and to rejoice in trials instead of 
being cast down by them. The order is, trial, 
patience, proof, hope. Trials properly borne cul- 
tivate patience ; patience affords us proof of what 
we really are, — Robinson translates the word ren- 
dered probation by proof, approval, tried integrity, 
— and this proof becomes the basis of our reason- 
able hopes for the time to come, such as will not 
fail or disappoint us ; for the exercise of these 
affections and virtues is re- enforced by a higher 
power, by communications from the love and holy 
spirit of God himself. Such are the glorious golden 
links of the chain which draw up the soul heaven- 
ward, — trial, patience, proof, hope, possession ; 
but they are all melted and welded in the love of 
God to us, and are made pure by his spirit. 

Abiel Abbot Livermore. 

BEHIND AND BEFORE. 
"/^\NE thing I do; the things behind forgetting, 
V_y And reaching forward to the things before, 
Unto the goal, the prize of God's high calling, 
Onward I press," — said that great soul of yore. 



LIFE'S VICTORIES, 2$ 

And in the heart like strains of martial music, 
Echo the words of courage, trust, and cheer, 
The while we stand, half hoping, half regretting, 
Between the coming and the parting year. 

Behind are joys, fair hopes that found fulfilment, 
Sweet human fellowships, and many a gain; 
Unanswered prayers, burdens of loss and sorrow, 
Faces that look no more in ours again. 

Before are opportunity and promise, 
Fairer fulfilments than the past could know; 
New growths of soul, new leadings of the Spirit, 
And all the glad surprises God will show. 

All we have done, or nobly failed in doing, 
All we have been, or bravely striven to be, 
Counts for our gain, within us still surviving, 
As power and larger possibility. 

All, all shall count ; the mingled joy and sorrow 
To force of finer being rise at last ; 
From the crude ores in trial's furnace smelted 
The image of the perfect life is cast. 

" Onward I press, the things behind forgetting 
And reaching forward to the things before : " 
Ring the brave words like strains of martial music, 
As we pass through the New Year's open door. 

Frederick L. Hosmer. 



26 LEA VES OF HEALING, 

BUT count the gains 
Which far the seeming loss outweigh ; 
Friendships built firm 'gainst flood and wind 
On rock-foundations of the mind ; 
Knowledge, instead of scheming hope ; 
For wild adventure, settled scope ; 
Talents from surface-ore profuse, 
Tempered and edged to tools for use ; 
Judgment, for passion's headlong whirls ; 
Old sorrows crystalled into pearls ; 
Losses by patience turned to gains, 
Possessions now, that once were pains ; 
Joy's blossom gone, as go it must, 
To ripen seeds of faith and trust. 
I have not spilt one drop of joy 
Poured in the senses of the boy, 
Nor Nature fails my walks to bless 
With all her golden inwardness ; 
And as blind nestlings, unafraid, 
Stretch up wide-mouthed to every shade 
By which their downy dream is stirred, 
Taking it for the mother-bird, 
So when God's shadow, which is light, 
Unheralded, by day or night, 
My wakening instincts falls across, 
Silent as sunbeams over moss, 
In my heart's nest unconscious things 
Stir with a helpless sense of wings, 
Lift themselves up, and tremble long 
With premonitions sweet of song. 

James Russell Lowell. 



LIFE'S VICTORIES. 27 

TF you ask me for an assurance that those vast 
powers, those sublime realities, which we name 
God, make personal account of you, so that your 
own safety is somehow cared for and not lost as 
a disregarded atom among mightier things, again 
I say, no man can prove it for you, but you may 
slowly and surely come to it for yourself. As you 
set yourself in earnest to the business of right living, 
you will more and more feel what a sublime thing 
life is, how divine is the universe in which you are 
a part ; and with that sense of the blessedness of 
life there comes to every true soul a most humble, 
grateful sense of something given, " Not of my- 
self, it is the gift of God ! " is its instinctive, deep- 
est word about whatever highest achievement or 
sweetest enjoyment comes to it. 

Train yourself to find the good in what seems 
evil, to make of disaster an opportunity for your 
courage, to master suffering by patience, to learn 
from sorrow, sympathy. So will there grow upon 
you an assurance that through all forms of what 
seems evil there is working a higher good. . . . 
Here too the word of Jesus stands always true, — 
" He that loseth his life shall find it." 

And finally, be patient. Upon the loyal soul 
there dawn from time to time more glorious morn- 



28 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

ings than it ever saw before. You may come to 
learn that life contains no more wonderful and 
blessed thing than God's surprises. A man strug- 
gles bravely and unsuccessfully with an evil habit 
and suddenly a change of circumstances lifts him 
out of its reach. A life of faithful service is lonely 
and hungry for human love, and some day a great 
and sacred friendship comes to it. A soul walks 
for years the patient path of duty, vainly long- 
ing for a sense of the living God, and in some 
unexpectant hour the Divine Presence shines full 
upon it. 

Nor is it alone by sudden surprises that we 
come to know how " God's gifts put man's best 
dreams to shame." To steady fidelity come 
steady growth and enlarging vision, as surely as 
the harvest follows the sowing. There are better 
things in store for you than you know. In the 
calendar of your future there are days marked for 
angelic visits. The angels may come disguised, 
but come they surely will. Yours be it to have 
for them an open door, and a house where amid 
firmly knit habits and pure affections they shall 

find a home, 

George S. Merriam. 



LIFE'S VICTORIES. 29 

SOME times there be, when thoughts of unseen 
things 
Press in upon me, and all earthly thoughts 
Do hide themselves, and I am lifted up 
Above the cares and labors of this world, 
Into that realm where all things are attuned 
And set to one grand harmony divine. 
And there, while listening to its flow, I gain 
New strength, and feel new courage for the work 
That lies before me, and begin anew 
Life's common duties, — no longer common, 
But part of that grand anthem, which when heard 
Aright and heard complete, such music gives 
As ne'er before to mortal ear was given. 

Everett O. Wood. 



I COUNT this thing to be grandly true 
That a noble deed is a step toward God, 
Lifting the soul from the common clod 
To a purer air and a broader view. 

We rise by the things that are under our feet ; 
By what we have mastered of good and gain ; 
By the pride deposed and the passion slain, 
And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet. 

Heaven is not reached at a single bound ; 
But we build the ladder by which we rise 
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, 
And we mount to its summit, round by round. 

J. G. Holland. 



30 LEA VES OF HEALING. 

I HELD it truth with him who sings 
To one clear harp of divers tones, 
That men may rise on stepping-stones 
Of their dead selves to higher things. 

Alfred Tennyson. 

THE BATTLE OF GOD. 

SO strive, so rule, Almighty Lord of all ! 
So greatly win the planet-victory ! 
So gloriously what baffles bring in thrall ! 
So strongly work, Earth's final jubilee 
With gladness and with singing to install ! 

And man may work with the great God : yea, ours 
This privilege, — all others how beyond ! 
To tend the great Man-root until it flowers ; 
To scorn with godly laughter when Despond 
Tamely before a hoary hindrance cowers ; 

Effectually the planet to subdue, 
And break old savagehood in claw and tusk ; 
That noble end to trust in and pursue 
Which under Nature's half-expressive husk 
Lies ever from the base conceal'd from view ; 

To draw our fellows up, as with a cord 
Of love, unto their high-appointed place, 
Till, from our state barbaric and abhorr'd, 
We do arise unto a royal race ; 
To be the blest companions of the Lord. 

Henry Septimus Sutton. 



LIFE'S VICTORIES. 3 I 



CHRIST. 

IN Christ I feel the heart of God 
Throbbing from heaven through earth ; 
Life stirs again within the clod, 
Renewed in beauteous birth. 
The soul springs up, a flower of prayer, 
Breathing his breath out on the air. 

In Christ I touch the hand of God; 
From his pure height reached down, 
By blessed ways before untrod, 
To lift us to our crown ; 
Victory that only perfect is 
Through loving sacrifice, like his. 

Holding his hand, my steadied feet 

May walk the air, the seas ; 

On life and death his smile falls sweet — 

Lights up all mysteries ; 

Stranger nor exile can I be 

In new worlds where he leadeth me. 

Lucy Larcom. 



JESUS laid his hands upon a multitude of 
things, — upon the sick, the afflicted, the 
hungry, the dying ■ upon little children, upon the 
bread he broke in the wilderness ; upon sorrow 
and upon pain ; and lastly, he laid them upon 



32 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

the cross ; and wherever he laid his hands he left 
a sweetness and a fragrance which wisdom can 
perceive, and wisdom alone can know. 

Henry Edward Manning. 



w 



E can hardly learn tenderness and humility 
enough except by suffering. 

George Eliot. 



TTUMAN character is never found "to enter 
into its glory," except through the ordeal of 
affliction. James Martineau. 

n^HERE is in man a higher than happiness ; he 
■^ can do without happiness, and find in stead 
thereof — Blessedness ! Was it not to preach 
forth this same Higher that sages and martyrs, the 
poet and the priest, in all times have spoken and 
suffered, — bearing testimony, through life and 
death, of the Godlike that is in man, and how in 
the Godlike only has he strength and freedom? 

Thomas Carlyle. 

TJ E who planted the germs of Pity in the hu- 

man heart must have meant to leave the root 

of Sorrow in human life. 

James Martineau. 



LIFE'S VICTORIES. 33 

TT is our Maker's care that plants alike thorns 
and flowers in our path. To reject his flowers 
would be none the less unfilial than to repine at 
his thorns. Frances Power Cobbe. 



T HAVE been a great deal happier since I have 
given up thinking about what is easy and pleas- 
ant, and being discontented because I could not 
have my own will. Our life is determined for us ; 
and it makes the mind very free when we give up 
wishing, and only think of bearing what is laid upon 
us, and doing what is given us to do. 

George Eliot. 

T/'OU are wrong in thinking of peace as some- 
thing which is to come only in a future life. 
There is no reason for expecting it hereafter but 
its having begun now. Every true surrender of 
selfish principles to God and the inward monitor 
is the beginning of heaven and heaven's peace. 
The best proof of a heaven to come is its dawning 
in us now. We are blinded by common errors to 
the degree of celestial good which is to be found 
on earth. I do not tell you to labor for it ; for a 
selfish impatience may remove it from us. I 
would say, accept your inward and outward trials 

3 



34 LEA VES OF HEALING. 

as appointed by the Friend of your soul for its 
progress and perfection, and use them for this 
end, not doubtingly or impetuously, but confid- 
ingly ; and just as fast as the power of Christian 
virtue grows within you, peace and heaven will 
come, unless, for some greater good, present hap- 
piness be obstructed by physical causes. Be of 
good cheer. Be not weary in well doing. Be not 
anxious. William Ellery Channing. 

nPHERE is the peace of surrendered as well as 
of fulfilled hopes ; the peace not of satisfied 
but of extinguished longings ; the peace not of the 
happy love and the secure fireside, but of unmur- 
muring and accepted loneliness ; the peace not of 
the heart which lives in joyful serenity afar from 
trouble and from strife, but of the heart where 
conflicts are over and where hopes are buried ; 
not the peace which brooded over Eden, but that 

which crowned Gethsemane. 

William R. Greg. 

ON HIS BLINDNESS. 

WHEN I consider how my light is spent 
Ere half my days, in this dark world and 
wide, 
And that one talent which is death to hide, 



LIFE'S VICTORIES. 35 

Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent 

To serve therewith my Maker, and present 

My true account, lest he returning chide ; 

" Doth God exact day-labor, light denied ? " 

I fondly ask: but Patience to prevent 

That murmur, soon replies, " God doth not need 

Either man's work or his own gifts ; who best 

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best ; his state 

Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed, 

And post o'er land and ocean without rest ; 

They also serve who only stand and wait," 

John Milton. 



T IFE is a short day's climbing ; mists and rain 
envelop us ; often we toil up expecting small 
returns, doubting at times the existence of moun- 
tain ranges. Then suddenly we are overtaken 
with a glad surprise. A halt, an unexpected turn, 
and a revelation breaks upon us, and then our 
years stand around draped in white, capped with 
Alpine splendors, and the whiteness of their peaks 
is not miracle or dogma, not creed, sect, or text, 
not the hope of heaven or the fear of hell, but the 
celestial commonplaces of earthly duties and hu- 
man privileges, — a mother's love, a father's manly 
care, the love of home and children, the heart ties, 
soft as silk but strong as iron, that either bind us 
to God, or mangle and cripple us, as we heed or 



36 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

defy them. These bring us the " peace of God 

which passeth all understanding," and garrison our 

hearts and our thoughts in the ideal, the Christ 

Jesus of the soul. 

Jenkin Lloyd Jones. 



'T^HE actual relief of misery is an inferior boon 
to that revelation of " the law of the spirit of 
life " which it begins to make discernible. " It 
would almost seem as if the withdrawal of all hope 
tended, in the beneficent ways of Providence, to 
quiet afflicted nature, and to bring about a com- 
posure and calm of the soul, which is proof against 
many keen temptations.' ' In many of those who 
receive it so it is, no doubt, the reflex of a very 
positive belief in an everlasting life of conscious 
and increasing joy, to which they may enter only 
through the gateway of pain ; but in many others 
it seems to be the simple natural effect of that 
discipline of " strength and purification " which 
is the profounder meaning of pain, so that they 
are already, without knowing it, entered into 
the eternal life, — nay, as in some cases known 
to us, have felt a certain exaltation of spirit in 
the conscious sense that they have been thus 
singled out by the Lord of Life, as those worthy, 



LIFE'S VICTORIES. 37 

like their Master, to be made "perfect through 
suffering.' ' 

Joseph Henry Allen. 



I^HEY went down together to the door, 
Which when the curate opened, lo! without 
The beggar sat ; and he saluted him : 
When lo ! the dazzled curate staggered back, 
For dread effulgence from the beggar's eyes 
Smote him, and from the crippled limbs shot forth 
Terrible lights, as pure long blades of fire. 

And, when the beggar looked on him, 
He said, " If I offend not, pray you tell 
Who and what are you : — I behold a face 
Marred with old age, sickness and poverty, — 
A cripple with a staff, who long hath sat 
Begging, and ofttimes moaning, in the porch, 
For pain and for the wind's inclemency: — 
What are you ? " Then the beggar made reply, 

. . . ■" My dwelling place 
Was far remote in heaven ; 
There I did wait ; and oft, at work, I sang, 
' To minister ! oh, joy, to minister ! ' 
And, it being known, a message came to me : 
* Whether is best, . . . 
To minister to others, or that they 
Should minister to thee ? ' Then on my face, 
Low lying, I made answer : ' It is best, 
Most High, to minister ; ' and thus came back 
The answer : * Choose not for thyself the best ; 



38 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

Go down, and, lo ! my poor shall minister, 
Out of their poverty, to thee ; shall learn 
Compassion by thy frailty ; and shall oft 
Turn back, when speeding home from work, to help 
Thee, weak and crippled, home. My little ones, 
Thou shalt importune for their slender mite, 
And pray, and move them that they give it up 
For love of me.' " 

The curate answered him, 
" Art thou content, O great one from afar ? " 
" I am. Behold ! I stand not all alone, 
That I should think to do a perfect work. 
I may not wish to give ; for I have heard 
'T is best for me that I receive. For me, 
God is the only giver, and his gift 
Is one." 

Then did the beggar lift 
His face to heaven, and utter forth a cry 
As of the pangs of death, and every tree 
Moved as if shaken by a sudden wind. 
He cried again, and there came forth a hand 
From some invisible form, which, being laid 
A little moment on the curate's eyes, 
It dazzled him with light that brake from it, 
So that he saw no more. 

Jean Ingelow. 

T^ROM the background of pain and sorrow often 
break out the noblest and most winning mani- 
festations of humanity. The depth of human sym- 



LIFE'S VICTORIES. 39 

pathy, the wealth of its love, is displayed in scenes 
of tribulation and need. The robes of charity 
show their whiteness amid the gloom of poverty 
and distress. Christlike patience is born of suf- 
fering, the soul shines out in its essential splendor 
through the medium of bodily anguish, and faith 
trims her lamp in the shadow of the grave. Shall 
we call this existence a trivial thing, whose very 
miseries are the occasions of the noblest triumphs, 
whose trials may be converted into divine strength, 
whose tears may change into celestial dew, and 
nourish flowers of immortal hope? 

Edwin H. Chapin. 



1 



T is easy to suffer and to wait if we take the in- 
stant as something to be beautified. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson. 



"T^AITH and patience are sure of ultimate 
triumph, — closed doors fly open, mountains 
of difficulty remove before the resolute will of man 
so inspired. The evils, failures, moral disasters, 
spiritual tragedies of life, can only be met worthily 
by hearts " at leisure from themselves." 

Henry Woods Perris. 



40 LEA VES OF HEALING, 

n^HEY were living to themselves. Self, with its 
hopes and promises and dreams, still had 
hold of them : but the Lord began to fulfil their 
prayers. They had asked for contrition, and he 
sent them sorrow; they had asked for purity, 
and he sent them thrilling anguish ; they had 
asked to be meek, and he had broken their 
hearts ; they had asked to be dead to the world, 
and he slew all their living hopes ; they had 
asked to be made like unto him, and he placed 
them in the furnace, sitting by "as a refiner of 
silver," till they should reflect his image ; they 
had asked to lay hold of his cross, and when he 
had reached it to them, it lacerated their hands. 
They had asked they knew not what, nor how ; but 
he had taken them at their word, and granted 
them all their petitions. They were hardly will- 
ing to follow on so far, or to draw so nigh to 
him. They had upon them an awe and fear, as 
Jacob at Bethel, or Eliphaz in the night visions, 
or as the Apostles when they thought they had 
seen a spirit, and knew not that it was Jesus. 
They could almost pray him to depart from them 
or to hide his awfulness. They found it easier to 
obey than to suffer, to do than to give up, to 
bear the cross than to hang upon it ; but they 



LIFE'S VICTORIES. 41 

cannot go back, for they have come too near the 
unseen cross, and its virtues have pierced too 
deeply within them. He is fulfilling to them his 
promise, " And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all 
men unto me." 

But now, at last, their turn is come. Before, 
they had only heard of the mystery, but now they 
feel it. He has fastened on them his look of love, 
as he did on Mary and Peter, and they cannot but 
choose to follow. Little by little, from time to 
time, by flitting gleams, the mystery of his cross 
shines upon them. They behold him lifted up; 
they gaze upon the glory which rays forth from 
the wounds of his holy passion ; and as they gaze, 
they advance, and are changed into his likeness, 
and his name shines out through them, for he 
dwells in them. They live alone with God above, 
in unspeakable fellowship ; willing to lack what 
others own, and to be unlike all so that they are 
only like him. 

Such are they in all ages who follow the Lamb 
whithersoever he goeth. Had they chosen for 
themselves, or had their friends chosen for them, 
they would have chosen otherwise. They would 
have been brighter here, but less glorious in his 
kingdom. They would have Lot's portion, not 
Abraham's. If they had halted anywhere — if he 



42 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

had taken off his hand, and let them stray back — 
what would they not have lost ! But he stayed 
them up, even against themselves. Many a time 
their foot had well-nigh slipped, but He in his 
mercy, held them up ; now, even in this life, they 
know all He did was done well. It was good for 
them to suffer, — they shall reign \ to bear the 
cross, — they shall wear the crown ; and not that 
their will but His was done in them. 

John Henry Newman. 

T3ALM Sunday is the anniversary- day of a 
grand victory over life, as Easter Sunday is 
of a like victory over death. . . . And so it is that 
this day is sacred to us as the day on which the 
Saviour turned of his own accord to death, entered 
on the last and heaviest pain, bowed his head to 
the thorns and his neck to the cross, gave his 
cheek to the smiter, his soul to the agony, and his 
life to the world. 

. . . Over there is the great city and temple, 
its roofs flashing like burnished gold in the sum- 
mer sunlight, but full of men that hate him and 
are determined to kill him whenever again he shall 
enter its gates. There behind him is the house of 
the sisters where he is so welcomed and honored 
and loved. Away over to the North is dear 



LIFE'S VICTORIES. 43 

old Galilee, where he wandered as a boy and 
worked as a man. And why should he not turn 
the head of his yearling round, go back to Beth- 
any, rest and repair his wasted strength, and then 
go to his old home and be quiet forevermore ? 

Ah, friends, when we know why, we know one 
of the most inestimable secrets that ever found its 
way into human souls ; for then we know how 
one little word of four letters, repeated in the quiet 
of the soul, can outweigh all the pleading of the 
nature for exemption from pain, all the longings 
of the heart for the world's best blessings, all the 
shrinking of the soul itself from the horrors of 
great darkness, and can carry us through Geth- 
semane and up Calvary and roll the great stone 
away from the sepulchre and lift us through the 
parting cloud ; and that small whispered word is 
Duty, and its twin sister is Love. 

And I know of nothing more fruitful of instruc- 
tion than to imagine for a moment that he should 
have yielded to the feeling that so struggled with 
Duty as, soon after, to compel him to cry, " Father, 
if it be possible, let this cup pass from me," and 
so turn back to Bethany and Galilee and the old 
quiet life again. What, then, must have been the 
result? Let me remember it whenever nature 
grapples with duty and tries to force her back to 



44 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

ease and quiet on my Palm Sunday. . . . Had it 
been possible that the whisper of that one little 
word should not be more than all beside to the 
Messiah, there would have been no Messiah and 
no Saviour. The most glorious things in this 
world's history and life would have been a dead 
blank. The infinite, the divine patience, the 
words that have sunk into the world's heart, the 
things that have renewed the world's life, had all 
gone back with that retreating figure, and no such 
light as rests there now, had rested on our graves, 
and no shining ones sat there to tell us they are 
empty of all but the graveclothes. The tenant 
has risen and gone to the old home again (to our 
Galilee) . Thank God, it could not be so ! The 
sun shining overhead that Palm Sunday had sooner 
turned back to his rising than Jesus had gone back 
to Bethany. 

But the lesson touches the heart as directly, 
stands before us as imperiously, is as inevitable, as 
if it could have been ; and it is this : suppose I 
turn back when Duty whispers, Go right on ; sup- 
pose sorrow and trial and pain, or the prospect of 
it, masters me, what then? Then there is no 
Palm Sunday in my calendar ; no shout for me of 
" Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the 
Lord!" In turning back, in shrinking back, in 



LIFE'S VICTORIES, 45 

failing to face all I fear when that little word is 
whispered in my soul, I leave that part of my life 
which may be the very condition of immortality a 
dead blank. Robert Collyer. 

^T^HE world's supreme act of self-sacrifice was 
serene and calm in the moment of its per- 
formance ; anguished and awful in the moments 
of its preparation. It was always in the intensity 
of prayer that our Lord saw what the Father 
willed him to do : and the natural weakness which 
trembled and shrank was poured into the bosom 
of the communing Comforter and replaced by his 
strength, so that the real trial was over before the 
outward occasion came ; and then no defeat was 
possible, for every element of infirmity had been 
brought to the Light in which is no darkness, and 
before him had passed away. And thus forever 
prayer remains the great duty of our nature, 
whether in the times in which sadly and humbly 
we resort to it as our refuge from the stupor or the 
wilfulness of selfishness and sin, or in the times in 
which we feel invited to communion, with the 
rapture and delight of clear vision offered to us if 
we will obey the call, and not shrink from the 
glorifying effort to meet our God. 

John Hamilton Thom. 



46 LEA VES OF HEALING. 



A70U may teach your child his prayers, and he 
*" shall say them with bended knee and reverent 
lips, and you shall explain to him how God hears 
and answers prayers, and he shall heed your coun- 
sels, and go to church and join decorously in the 
service, and be shocked and pained at irrever- 
ence in others, — and all the while have hardly yet 
known what prayer is, until in some profound trial, 
under some bitter bereavement, in some humilia- 
ting or threatening exposure, in some awakening 
throe of conscience, some shock of the intellect or 
the will, the theorizer and second-hand saint finds 
himself overboard and called to swim for his life, 
— no bladders under him, no fenced-in swimming- 
bath around him, no life-boat near, — nothing left 
but the distant shore and his muscles, courage and 
effort to reach it ! Then it is, when the soul cries 
out for the living God, longs and faints for his 
presence, and in its fierce struggle for life strikes 
out with its spiritual limbs to reach its shore, that 
faith is born ; that God's spirit comes under the 
soul, like the bounding, elastic sea beneath the 
trusting swimmer; that prayer becomes its own 
interpreter, God his own witness, and the soul its 
own teacher and way. 

Experience is the inward light, and it will satisfy 



LIFE'S VICTORIES. 47 

each soul in its own way. All eyes are not helped 
in the same way \ too much light blinds as cer- 
tainly as too little ; but God puts a taper, a candle, 
a star, a sun, a heaven of suns into the souls of his 
children, just as they need or can bear more or 
less. The glow-worm's light guides its mate as 
well as the morning star guides the dawn. Not 
what your soul, but what my soul needs, — not 
what would satisfy you, but what satisfies me, — is 
the heart's rightful demand \ and this is just what 
religious experience, when it comes, gives to every 
soul. 

If people would only believe in just that little 
original religious experience which each of them 
possesses, if they would only trust the light that 
lighteth every man that cometh into the world, 
how soon they would find it increasing and shed- 
ding ever more satisfying illumination on their 
way. Henry W. Bellows. 

TN an old book of emblems of the fifteenth cen- 
tury, there is a device of the God of Love, not 
blind but winged, and with a pair of dividers in 
his hands, planting one point firmly on the centre, 
and with the other free, preparing to sweep the 
universe with his circle. Beneath is the legend, 
"From one fixed point I include all." Is not this 



48 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

a motto for the human soul? We have the start- 
ing-place, the centre, the fixed point, in our per- 
sonal experience, — a mere spark of divine life it 
may seem ; but the smallest soul has room for 
that, and from that shining spark the possibilities 
of infinite knowledge, infinite wisdom, infinite gain 
in piety and truth, submit themselves to our 
conquest. 

Stand, then, on that central spot, your own relig- 
ious experience ; give it not up to any summons ; 
barter it not for any other possession ; suspect it 
not for any challenge of others. But with your 
soul opening and questful, one foot fixed and one 
loose and free, step forward, widen the circle of 
light, conquer the darkness, and finally hope to see 
as you are seen, to know as you are known, and 
to have all mysteries lost in fulness of light and 
love. Henry W. Bellows, 



"Y\ J HAT then is our help ? How then shall we 
reconcile ourselves to life ? Only by throw- 
ing ourselves, as Christ did, when sorrows of this 
kind came upon him, out of ourselves into love of 
God, and into love of man. Again and again 
when Jesus was half broken-hearted with the evil 
which attacked him, he went into the wilderness 



LIFE'S VICTORIES. 49 

or to the mountain top to pray alone, to realize 
his union with the Father. In the very last and 
bitterest sorrow, when even his best beloved could 
not watch with him for one hour, he sought in the 
olive garden communion with his Father. And 
there, in utter loss of self, he found the peace 
which carried him through a death inflicted by 
those who hated him who died for them in love. 

This is one secret of victory over suffering, — 
loss of self in love of God. 

But that alone would not have been enough for 
Jesus. For such solitary communion tends to 
isolate us with ourselves. Jesus, and we with him, 
must lose himself in communion with God through 
work of love done to mankind. He passed from 
his own trouble into active help, and forgot all 
pain in the larger thoughts of what he might do to 
heal and succor pain. I think some of us might 
try that way. Trouble, anxiety, discontent, double 
themselves by brooding 6 on them ; they lessen to a 
shred when we seek the anxious, the troubled and 
the discontented, and lift them up, using our pain 
to help their pain. It is by work of this kind that 
the vast conception of mankind growing through 
sorrow and sacrifice into union with God slowly 
arises in us, and dwarfs in the end all our personal 
distress. We live then in so glorious an idea that 
4 



50 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

we feel our life glorious. We prize the breath we 
share with human kind, however painfully we draw 
it; and at last, driven by pain to feel with the 
pain of the world, learn the ineffable joy of that 
forgetfulness of self in sympathy with others which 
was the support, nay, even the rapture of Christ 
upon the Cross ; which, touched for one moment 
with the depth of agony, passed into that majestic 
cry of peace and joy, " It is finished ; Father, into 
thy hands I commend my spirit." 

We may, with him, feel the very worst agony of 
life, and know we can live no more. But if, in the 
midst of it, we live in love, if still, for all the pain, 
we lose ourselves, we shall win the last and crown- 
ing joy of death for love. For God does not ask 
us to live longer than we can. The hour comes 
when death, our friend, releases us ; and then all 
our long repression, all the forces of sorrowful 
effort, all the noble pain, are transformed into the 
expansion of the soul, into powers of joy, into the 
inconceivable m rapidity with which we live and 
work in the life and labor of God. 

Stopford A. Brooke. 

I AM the True Vine," said our Lord, " and Ye, 
My Brethren, are the Branches ; " and that Vine 
Then first uplifted in its place, and hung 
With its first purple grapes, since then has grown, 



LIFE'S VICTORIES, 51 

Until its green leaves gladden half the world, 
And from its countless clusters rivers flow 
For healing of the nations, and its boughs 
Innumerable stretch through all the earth, 
Ever increasing, ever each entwined 
With each, all living from the Central Heart. 
And you and I, my brethren, live and grow, 
Branches of that immortal human Stem. 

Let us consider now this life of the Vine 
Whereof we are partakers : we shall see 
Its way is not of pleasure nor of ease. 
It groweth not like the wild trailing weeds 
Whither it willeth, flowering here and there ; 
Or lifting up proud blossoms to the sun, 
Kissed by the butterflies, and glad for life, 
And glorious in their beautiful array; 
Or running into lovely labyrinths 
Of many forms and many fantasies, 
Rejoicing in its own luxuriant life. 

The flower of the Vine is but a little thing, 
The least part of its life, — you scarce could tell 
It ever had a flower ; the fruit begins 
Almost before the flower has had its day. 
And as it grows, it is not free to heaven, 
But tied to a stake ; and if its arms stretch out, 
It is but crosswise, also forced and bound ; 
And so it draws out of the hard hill-side, 
Fixed in its own place, its own food of life ; 
And quickens with it, breaking forth in bud, 



52 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

Joyous and green, and exquisite of form, 

Wreathed lightly into tendril, leaf, and bloom. 

Yea, the grace of the green vine makes all the land 

Lovely in spring-time ; and it still grows on 

Faster, in lavishness of its own life ; 

Till the fair shoots begin to wind and wave 

In the blue air, and feel how sweet it is. 

But so they leave it not ; the husbandman 

Comes early, with the pruning-hooks and shears, 

And strips it bare of all its innocent pride, 

And wandering garlands, and cuts deep and sure, 

Unsparing for its tenderness and joy. 

And in its loss and pain it wasteth not ; 

But yields itself with unabated life, 

More perfect under the despoiling hand. 

The bleeding limbs are hardened into wood ; 

The thinned-out bunches ripen into fruit 

More full and precious, to the purple prime. 

And still, the more it grows, the straighter bound 
Are all its branches ; and as rounds the fruit, 
And the heart's crimson comes to show in it, 
And it advances to its hour, — its leaves 
Begin to droop and wither in the sun; 
But still the life-blood flows, and does not fail, 
All into fruitfulness, all into form. 

Then comes the vintage, for the days are ripe. 
And surely now in its perfected bloom, 
It may rejoice a little in its crown, 
Though it bend low beneath the weight of it, 



LIFE'S VICTORIES. 53 

Wrought out of the long striving of its heart. 

But ah ! the hands are ready to tear down 

The treasures of the grapes; the feet are there 

To tread them in the wine-press, gathered in ; 

Until the blood-red rivers of the wine 

Run over, and the land is full of joy. 

But the vine standeth stripped and desolate, 

Having given all ; and now its own dark time 

Is come, and no man payeth back to it 

The comfort and the glory of its gift ; 

But rather, now most merciless, all pain 

And loss are piled together, as its days 

Decline, and the spring sap has ceased to flow; 

Now is it cut back to the very stem ; 

Despoiled, disfigured, left a leafless stock, 

Alone through all the dark days that shall come. 

And all the w T inter time the wine gives joy 

To those who else were dismal in the cold ; 

But the vine standeth out amid the frost ; 

And after all hath only this grace left, 

That it endures in long, lone steadfastness 

The winter through, — and next year blooms again; 

Not bitter for the torment undergone, 

Not barren for the fulness yielded up ; 

As fair and fruitful towards the sacrifice 

As if no touch had ever come to it 

But the soft airs of heaven and dews of earth, — 

And so fulfils itself in love once more. 

And now what more shall I say? 
The Vine from every living limb bleeds wine ; 



54 LEA VES OF HEALING. 

Is it the poorer for that spirit shed ? 
Measure thy life by loss instead of gain ; 
For love's strength standeth in love r s sacrifice ; 
And whoso suffers most hath most to give. 

The living Vine, — Christ chose it for himself : 
God gave to man for use and sustenance 
Corn, wine, and oil, and each of these is good : 
And Christ is Bread of Life and Light of Life. 
But yet he did not choose the summer corn, 
That shoots up straight and free in one quick growth, 
And has its day, and is done, and springs no more : 
Nor yet the olive, all whose boughs are spread 
In the soft air, and never lose a leaf, 
Flowering and fruitful in perpetual peace : 
But only this for him and his in one, — 
The everlasting, ever-quickening Vine, 
That gives the heat and passion of the world, 
Through its own life-blood, still renewed and shed. 

Ugo Bassi. 
Rendered i?t English verse by Harriet E. H. King. 

GOD did anoint thee with his odorous oil, 
To wrestle, not to reign ; and he assigns 
All thy tears over, like pure crystallines, 
For younger fellow-workers of the soil 
To wear for amulets. So others shall 
Take patience, labor, to their heart and hand, 
From thy hand, and thy heart, and thy brave cheer, 
And God's grace fructify through thee to all. 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 



LIFE'S VICTORIES. 55 



OMAY I join the choir invisible 
Of those immortal dead who live again 
In minds made better by their presence ; live 
In pulses stirred to generosity, 
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 
Of miserable aims that end with self, 
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, 
And with their mild persistence urge men's minds 
To vaster issues. 

May I reach 
That purest heaven, — be to other souls 
The cup of strength in some great agony, 
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, 
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty, 
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, 
And in diffusion ever more intense ! 
So shall I join the choir invisible, 
Whose music is the gladness of the world. 

George Eliot. 



T HAVE long looked at it as a most blessed 
*- compensation to our troubles that they teach 
us how to sympathize with others ; yes, they teach 
us what sympathy itself is. You may throw all 
your heart into it, by every imagination, but, if it 
have not actually pressed its hot and heavy hand 



56 LEA VES OF HEALING. 

upon you, you cannot know what affliction is, you 
cannot know the sympathy that starts quick within 
one as he feels that another has come within the 
great guild and mystery of grief; nor can your very 
truest word give that something of nameless, unut- 
terable support which comes from one who is 
known to have been a sufferer. In every circle 
you will find those who seem singled out, whose 
society is craved, who get to be the ones sent for 
and relied upon, not because of any eloquent 
tongue, or much doing, or any special tact, but 
because of the grace that is only of experience, 
that teaches just what to do and when to forbear. 
There are some faces on which sorrow has written 
that which is more comforting than all beatitudes ; 
some tones that have a music in them joy never 
has ; some manners it would seem only angels 
could wear; and all learned under the stern and 
fiery, the purifying, elevating ministry of trouble, 
the school in which souls are taught life's holiest 
duties, and led into life's grandest issues. 

But sympathy is no native gift ; it is beyond 
that. The finest feelings, the most exquisite 
adapting of ourselves to others' standpoint, do not 
give it. It is a thing of culture, and its crowning 
culture is from sorrows ourselves have met and 
have wisely borne. It is a divine gift and privi- 



LIFE'S VICTORIES, $J 

lege, this power of sympathy ; and it has a divine 
mission, — divine in that it leads us among the 
superior things, and shows us how we, too, may 
handle the things that ally us with God. 

John F. W. Ware. 



I will not let thee go until thou bless me. — Gen. 
xxxii. 26. 



DEATH'S MINISTRY. 



DEATH'S MINISTRY. 

All things are yours, . . . whether life or death.- 
i Cor. iii. 21, 22. 



^^HERE is an " unseen universe " lying over 
against and within that which is visible and 
apparent to the senses. The outer, the visible, is 
in a state of constant whirl and change ; it may be 
resolved back into its original elements, or dis- 
sipated in impalpable gases ; but the universe of 
life and principles in which man finds his con- 
sciousness, his freedom, his real self-hood, is not 
and cannot be affected by any of these outer 
changes. Man may sum up in himself all there is 
of nature below him ; but this is not his full meas- 
ure ; he is more ; he is a spirit ; he has a moral 
nature ; he has free-will. And thus man, though 
a part of nature, and with a body conditioned in 
natural laws, has a something beyond this, and 
hence he may give back his body to the earth, and 
yet himself live on in his finer, his real world of 
spirit. . . . 



62 LEA VES OF HEALING. 

Life is a fact, — a persistent energy, making pos- 
sible and holding all there is in thought, in beauty, 
in love, in joy. Death is a nonentity, a nothing : 
or only a passing phase, or an appearance. " God 
is not the God of the dead but of the living " — of 
life ; and hence, in the world of the real there is 
no death. H. W. Thomas. 



Y\ TE are, perhaps, too much in the habit of 
^ * thinking of death as the culmination of dis- 
ease, which regarded only in itself, is an evil, and 
a terrible evil. But I think rather of death as the 
first pulse of the new strength, shaking itself free 
from the old mouldy remnants of earth-garments, 
that it may begin in freedom the new life that 
grows out of the old. The caterpillar dies into 
the butterfly. Who knows but disease may be the 
coming of the keener life breaking into this, and 
beginning to destroy, like fire, the inferior modes 
or garments of the present? And thus disease 
would be but the sign of the salvation of fire ; of 
the agony of the greater life to lift us to itself, out 
of that wherein we are failing and sinning. And 
so we praise the consuming fire of life. 

George Mac Donald. 



DEATH'S MINISTRY. 63 

"PvEATH had no bitterness. It was rather an 
exhalation than a dissolution. Immortality 
was not a tradition ; it was a personal assurance. 
He lived in the glory of its promise, as plants live 
in air. As the sunshine sleeps in the sods, so 
heaven melted into his earth. 

" To thee death was not 
So much even as the lifting of a latch ; 
Only a step into the open air, 
Out of a tent already luminous 
With light that shines through its transparent walls ! " 

Octavius Brooks Frothingham, 

of William Henry Channing. 

He quickeneth, but " He killeth : " blessed they 
Who may abide in trust that final day / 

JELALU-'D-'DIN, ER-RUMI, the saint of Balkh, 
the son 
Of him surnamed " Flower of the Faith," this was a 

chosen one, 
To whom Death softly showed himself, Heaven's 

gentle call to give ; 
For what word is it bids us die, save that which made 
us live ? 

Sick lay he there in Konya ; 'twas dawn; the golden 

stream 
Of light, new springing in the east, on his thin lips did 

gleam, — 



64 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

Those lips which spake the praise of God all through 

his holy years, 
And murmured now, with faith and hope unchanged, 

the morning prayers. 

Then one who watched beside his bed heard at the 

inner gate 
A voice cry, " Aftah / ' Open ! ' from far I come, and 

wait 
To speak my message to Jelal, — a message that will 

bring 
Peace and reward to him who lies the Fdtihah 

murmuring." 

Thereat the watcher drew the bar which closed the 

chamber-door, 
Wondering and 'feared, for ne'er was heard upon this 

earth before 
Accents so sweet and comforting, nor ever eyes of 

men 
Saw presence so majestical as his who entered then. 

Entered with gliding footsteps a bright celestial 

youth, 
Splendid and strange in beauty, past words to speak 

its truth ; 
Midnight is not so dark and deep as was his solemn 

gaze, 
By love and pity lighted, as the night with silvery 

rays. 



DEATH'S MINISTRY. 6$ 

' What is thy name ? " the watcher asked, " that I 

may tell my lord, 
Thou fair and dreadful messenger, whose glance is as 

a sword ; 
Whose face is like the Heaven unveiled ; whose tender, 

searching voice 
Maketh the heart cease beating, but bids the soul 

rejoice." 

" Azrael Ana," spake the shape, " I am the Spirit of 
Death ; 

And I am sent from Allah's throne to stay thy mas- 
ter's breath." 

" Come in ! come in ! thou Bird of God," cried joy- 
ously Jelal, 

" Fold down thy heavenly plumes and speak ! — Islam ! 
what shall be, shall." 

"Thou blessed one!" the Angel said, "I bring thy 

time of peace ; 
When I have touched thee on the eyes, life's latest 

ache will cease ; 
God bade me come as I am seen amid the heavenly 

host, 
No enemy of awful mould, but he who loveth most." 

" Dear Angel ! do what thou art bid," quoth Jelal, 

smilingly, 
" God willing, thou shalt find to-day a patient one in 

me ; 

5 



66 LEAVES OF HEALING, 

Sweet is the cup of bitterness which cometh in such 

wise ! " 
With that he bowed his saintly brow, — and Azrael 

kissed his eyes. 

Al-Mumit I " Slayer ! " send hi7n thus, 
In love, not anger, unto us. 

Edwin Arnold. 
From the Arabic 

DEATH'S ANGEL. 

COME with a smile, when come thou must, 
Evangel of the world to be, 
And touch and glorify this dust, — 

This shuddering dust that now is me, — 
And from this prison set me free ! 

Long in those awful eyes I quail, 
That gaze across the grim profound ; 

Upon that sea there is no sail, 
Nor any light nor any sound 
From the far shore that girds it round : 

Only — two still and steady rays 

That those twin orbs of doom o'ertop ; 

Only — a quiet, patient gaze 

That drinks my being, drop by drop, 
And bids the pulse of nature stop. 

Come with a smile, auspicious friend, 
To usher in the eternal day ! 



DEATH'S MINISTRY, 67 

Of these weak terrors make an end, 
And charm the paltry chains away 
That bind me to this timorous clay ! 

And let me know my soul akin 

To sunrise and the winds of morn, 

And every grandeur that has been 

Since this all-glorious world was born, — 
Nor longer droop in my own scorn. 

Come, when the way grows dark and chill ! 

Come, when the baffled mind is weak, 
And in the heart that voice is still, 

Which used in happier days to speak, 

Or only whispers, sadly meek. 

Come with a smile that dims the sun ! 

With pitying heart and gentle hand! 
And waft me, from a work that 's done, 

To peace, that waits on thy command, 

In some mysterious better land. 

William Winter. 



I SIT alone and watch the darkening years, 
And all my heart grows dim with doubt and fear, 
Till out of deepest gloom a Face appears ; 
The only one of all that shineth clear. 

Make white thy wedding-garments, O my soul ! 

And sigh no longer for thy scanty dower ; 
For if He loves thee, He will crown the whole 

With nobler beauty and immortal power. 



68 LEA VES OF HEALING. 

mighty Angel of the secret name ! 

Come, for my heart doth answer thy All-hail ; 

1 know thy clasp is like a wind of flame ; 
I know that I shall perish, yet prevail. 

Come with the new name and the mystic stone, 
And speak so low that none shall hear the call. 

O beautiful, beloved, and still unknown, 

I ask Thee naught; Thy look hath promised all ! 

Carl Spencer. 

MY soul is full of whispered song, 
My blindness is my sight, — 
The shadows that I feared so long 
Are all alive with light. 

The while my pulses faintly beat, 

My faith doth so abound, 
I feel grow firm beneath my feet 

The green, immortal ground. 

The palace walls I almost see 

Where dwells my Lord and King: 

O grave, where is thy victory ! 
O death, where is thy sting ! 

Alice Cary. 

SONG OF THE SILENT LAND. 

INTO the Silent Land ! 
Ah ! who shall lead us thither ? 
Clouds in the evening sky more darkly gather, 



DEATH'S MINISTRY. 69 

And shattered wrecks lie thicker on the strand. 
Who leads us with a gentle hand 
Thither, O thither, 
Into the Silent Land? 

Into the Silent Land ! 

To you, ye boundless regions 

Of all perfection ! Tender morning-visions 

Of beauteous souls ! The Future's pledge and band ! 

Who in Life's battle firm doth stand, 

Shall bear Hope's tender blossoms 

Into the Silent Land ! 

O Land ! O Land ! 

For all the broken-hearted 

The mildest herald by our fate allotted 

Beckons, and with inverted torch doth stand 

To lead us with a gentle hand 

To the land of the great Departed, 

Into the Silent Land ! 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 

From the German of Salis. 



"GOOD-NIGHT! NOT GOOD-BY." 

SAW my Lady die ; 

And he, who ofttimes cruel is, dark Death, 
Was so deep sorrowful to stay her breath, 
He came all clemency : 



1 



JO LEA VES OF HEALING. 

He would not let her know ; 
So well he loved the bright soul he must take, 
That for our grieving and her own fair sake 

He hid his shaft and bow : 

Upon her lips he laid 
That " kiss of God " which kills but does not harm ; 
With tender message, breathing no alarm, 

He said, " Be unafraid ! " 

Sorrow grew almost glad, 
Pain half forgiven, parting well-nigh kind, 
To mark how placidly my Lady's mind 

Consented. Ready clad 

In robes of unseen light 
Her willing soul spread wing ; and, while she passed, 
" Darling ! good-by ! " we moaned — but she, at last, 

Murmured, " No ! but good-night ! " 

Good-night, then ! Sweetheart ! Wife ! 
If this world be the dark time, and its morrow 
Day-dawn of Paradise, dispelling sorrow, 

Lighting our starless Life. 

Good-night ! — and not good-by ! 
Good-night ! — and best " Good-morrow ! " when we 

wake ; 
Yet why so quickly tired ? Well, we must make 

Haste to be done, and die ! 



DEATH'S MINISTRY, J\ 

For dying has grown dear 
Now you are dead, who turned all things to grace ; 
We see Death made pale slumber on your face ; 

Good-night ! — But is dawn near ? 

Edwin Arnold. 



IN SLEEP. 
u He giveth his beloved (in) sleep." 

NOT in our waking hours alone 
His constancy and care are known ; 
But locked in slumber fast and deep 
He giveth to us while we sleep. 

What giveth He ? From toil release, 
Quiet from God, night's starlit peace ; 
Till with the coming of the morn 
We greet the day, like it new-born. 

And pondering this mystery, 
There came a larger truth to me, — 
How in the sleep that we call death 
He sleepeth not nor slumbereth, 

But still sustains the silent soul 
Until the shadows backward roll, 
And with the passing of the night 
It wakens in immortal light ! 

What giveth He ? No more again 
To know the touch of mortal pain ; 



J2 LEA VES OF HEALING. 

All weakness past, each fetter riven, — 
For earth the larger life of Heaven ! 

Dear friend, as o'er thy pallid face 
The tall white lilies breathed their peace, 
And stillness like a solitude 
Enwrapt the tearful multitude, 

How sweetly on that sea of calm 
Floated the music of the psalm, — 
The Spirit's voice upon the deep, 
" He giveth his beloved sleep ! " 

Once more the sun with lavish hand 
Pours lengthening day along the land; 
But not with spring-time bloom and bird 
Thy smile returns, thy voice is heard : 

Yet still we say the old-time words, 
" In life, in death, we are the Lord's ; " 
And trust thee to His love to keep 
Who giveth to His own in sleep. 

Frederick L. Hosmer. 



" 'T is better to have loved and lost 
Than never to have loved at all." 

T3ETTER because of our happy memories of 

past joys ; better again, because our loss has 

given us a deeper understanding of what true love 

is. For love has three stages of growth : first and 

most common is the selfish love that takes ; sec- 



DEATH'S MINISTRY. 7$ 

ond, the unselfish love that gives ; and third, and 
highest of all, the sanctified love that surrenders ; 
— which in pure self-sacrifice is willing for the 
higher good of the loved one to forego the joy of 
its presence. This is the holiest form of love, and 
few are they who can attain it. Be it ours to 
show that higher love that is willing to surrender 
its dearest, so that He wills it. 

Charles W. Wendte. 

TCE breaks many a branch, and so I see a great 
A many persons bowed down and crushed by 
their afflictions. But now and then I meet one 
that sings in affliction, and then I thank God for 
my own sake as well as his. There is no such 
sweet singing as a song in the night. You recol- 
lect the story of the woman who, when her only 
child died, in rapture looked up, as with the face of 
an angel, and said, " I give you joy, my darling." 
That single sentence has gone with me years and 
years down through my life, quickening and com- 
forting me. Henry Ward Beecher. 



T^VEATH : have you ever wrestled with that 
death- sorrow till you know its inner sweet- 
ness? Sweetness greater than all, I would almost 
say. The loss is loss. We say, perhaps, " It is 



74 LEA VES OF HEALING. 

their gain," and wish to be willing. Our hurt gets 
no relief. The days go by and the emptiness is 
as empty, and the silence as silent, and the ache 
as relentless in its pain. What shall we do ? Our 
friends look on and wish that they could help us. 
And they know that help will come, because to 
their own wrestling it once came. They know 
that the heart of this pain is joy indeed. And if 
you asked them how it came about in distress so 
very sore as yours, their differing words will prob- 
ably amount to this : that such pain can be stilled 
in one way only, and that is by being more actively 
unselfed, by doing more for others through one's 
sadness, and trying hard to do simply right. It 
takes a wrestle, yes ; but they will assure us as a 
simple inward fact, whose chemistry they do not 
pretend to understand, that the inner wards of 
helpfulness and duty done at such a time deepen 
and sweeten into something that almost seems a 
new experience from its exceeding peace. It is 
not time making us forget, — nay, just the oppo- 
site : we feel that this new peace is somehow vi- 
tally connected with that pain; and at last we 
come to think of them and feel them together. 
And then we begin to call it peace and forget it 
was pain; and by and by the hour in memory 
which is our lingering place for quiet, happy 



DEATH'S MINISTRY. 75 

thoughts, is the very one which is lighted by a 
dear, dead face. It is our heaven-spot ; and, like 
the fair city of the Apocalypse, it hath no need of 
sun, for the glory of that face doth lighten it. 
Perhaps, as life goes by, there will be more than 
one of these green pastures with still waters in our 
inner life. And this we shall then find out, — that 
each death-sorrow is itself unique, because each 
life and love has been unique. And thus the very 
highest and deepest and holiest of our experiences 
in some way wear the likeness of those friends that 
we have lost. William C. Gannett. 

T^HE next best thing to a great joy is a great 
^ grief. My sorrow is now the root of all that 
any love in me, the source of all aspiration, the 
stimulus to all good. I think I should not fear 
for any one what is called "selfishness of grief.' , 
If they have loved a noble soul, that influence will 
surely raise them into sympathy, in time. It will 
be sooner in some cases than in others, but it will 
be, for love is life, and bereaved ones have no 
personal life any more, — nothing to wish for them- 
selves \ they cannot choose but turn to the life of 
others. It is one of the most benignant laws of 
this world of ours. 

Story of William and Lucy Smith. 



J6 LEAVES OF HEALING. 



ABSENCE. 

WHAT shall I do with all the days and hours 
That must be counted ere I see thy face? 
How shall I charm the interval that lowers 

Between this time and that sweet time of grace. 

I '11 tell thee : for thy sake, I will lay hold 
Of all good aims, and consecrate to thee, 

In worthy deeds, each moment that is told 
While thou, beloved one, art far from me. 

For thee, I will arouse my thoughts to try 

All heavenward flights, all high and holy strains; 

For thy dear sake, I will walk patiently 

Through these long hours, nor call their minutes 
pains. 

I will this weary blank of absence make 

A noble task-time, and will therein strive 

To follow excellence, and to o'ertake 

More good than I have won since yet I live. 

So may this darksome time build up in me 

A thousand graces which shall thus be thine ; 

So may my love and longing hallowed be, 

And thy dear thought an influence divine. 

Frances Anne Kemble. 



DEATH'S MINISTRY. J J 

^pHROUGH all the mysteries of our earthly lot, 
A we would feel ourselves embosomed in the 
Infinite Strength and Peace. . . . Whether we walk 
in the morning light, or in the night shadows, — 
over, around, and beneath us are spread the 
Everlasting Arms. . . . How strong is the assur- 
ance that what is bound up with our life, and 
makes a dear part of our being, cannot be wholly 
lost ; that it must answer to the love in which it is 
more deeply than ever enshrined ! How real be- 
comes the unseen world, no longer unfamiliar, but 
warm with the treasures and light of home ! How 
we look through its half-opened gates, into its glory 
and its peace, where the innocence and beauty of 
childhood must dwell in the life of which they are 
the image ; and the ties that here seem broken 
must be preserved in the love that made them 
ours ; and the powers we would have trained here, 
must be unfolded in the same care that inspired 
our striving, and will not let it be in vain. 

Nor would we forget that by this tranquil mys- 
tery which we call death, we are brought the closer 
to a sense of an infinite calm of unchangeable good 
in which we must confide ; on whose bosom, with 
our beloved that have fallen asleep therein, we can 
rest, sure of compensations flowing from the Life 



78 LEAVES OF HEALING, 

that can comprehend the depth of these affections 
it has implanted, and the bitterness of earthly loss. 

Samuel Johnson. 



HP HIS loving Care that folds in our little lives, 
A how near it comes when we need it most ! 
I feel as if it held you now in a tenderness such as 
none of us can know, and none know how to ask 
for. "The night shall be light about you," calling 
you to what trustlike sleep, bringing out holy, eter- 
nal stars. ... I know that you will, more than 
ever, know how to help the weak who faint amid 
the mysteries of those laws of life we call death. 
For only the uplifted face of one who has tasted 
these waters and found them divine, can help such 
to faith. Here in the border of the heavy loss, 
and the change it is so hard to bring into the 
daily ways of life, feel as much as you can, how 
many hearts there are that would come and sit 
with you, as near as they may, with their best 
sympathy and faith. Samuel Johnson. 



He will swallow up Death in Victory. — Isaiah 
xxv. 8. 



IMMORTALITY. 



IMMORTALITY. 

I am the resurrection, and the life : he that be- 
lieveth on me, though he die, yet shall he live; and 
whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die. 

Verily, verily I say unto you, he that heareth my 
word and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life, 
and cometh not into condemnation ; but hath passed 
out of death into life. 

And exercise thyself unto godliness ; for godliness 
is profitable for all things, having promise of the life 
which now is, and of that which is to come. 

In the way of righteousness is life ; and in the path- 
way thereof there is no death. 



i 



WITH uncovered head 

Salute the sacred dead, 
Who went, and who return not. Say not so ! 
'T is not the grapes of Canaan that repay, 
But the high faith that failed not by the way ; 
Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave ; 
No bar of endless night exiles the brave ; 

And to the saner mind 
We rather seem the dead that stay behind. 
Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow ! 
6 



82 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

For never shall their aureoled presence lack : 
I see them muster in a gleaming row, 
With ever youthful brows that nobler show ; 
We find in our dull road their shining track ; 

In every nobler mood 
We feel the orient of their spirit glow, 
Part of our life's unalterable good, 
Of all our saintlier aspiration ; 

They come transfigured back, 
Secure from change in their high-hearted ways, 
Beautiful evermore, and with the rays 
Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation ! 

James Russell Lowell. 



A /TAN is a creature of the future. In no manner 
is he simply a creature of the day. The 
moment does not contain him. The curtain of the 
night but ill conceals the next dawning. The 
future is veiled only dimly ; such light strikes 
through, that man cries, " Behind the veil, behind 
the veil ! " We are like restless children, eager 
for the sunrise when some fond anticipation dis- 
turbs their sleep. We are men standing by the 
curtained future, and beholding behind the folds, 
like the ancient Jew, the mercy-seat and the 
cherubim. Silas W. Sutton. 



IMMORTALITY, 83 

HHHE to-morrow of death is near because of the 
A hopes that rest in that to-morrow. We live 
another life in our life. Thought and hope and 
love break through the barriers of death and live 
on the further side. Aspiration rises on wings into 
that realm beyond the barriers. Man is impatient 
of more or fewer years, and while time is a laggard 
and death delays, leaps to mighty conclusions. 
The sense of immortality stirs within his breast 
and makes him uneasy with a great joy. He 
reflects how out of dust and ashes aspiration may 
not rise to transcend the truth, and how T hope is a 
divine pledge, and how virtue and praise and love 
and joy cannot die ; how every worthy and high 
principle that finds place in his being allies him to 
a sweet mystery and commanding Power. 

Silas W. Sutton. 

HPHE curtains of yesterday drop down, the 
A curtains of to-morrow roll up ; but yesterday 
and to-morrow both are. Pierce through the 
Time-Element, glance into the Eternal. And 
seest thou therein any glimpse of Immortality? 
Is the white tomb of our loved one, who died from 
our arms, and must be left behind us there, which 
rises in the distance, like a pale, mournfully 



84 LEA VES OF HEALING. 

receding milestone, to tell how many toilsome, 
uncheered miles we have journeyed on alone, — 
but a pale spectral illusion? Is our lost friend 
still mysteriously here, even as we are here myste- 
riously, with God ? Know of a truth that only the 
Time-shadows have perished, or are perishable ; 
that the real being of whatever was, and whatever 
is, and whatever will be, is even now and forever. 

Thomas Carlyle. 

TT is a little thing in comparison to believe in 
immortality. The great thing is to live as an 
immortal. John Weiss. 

TI TE talk of immortality ; but there is a better 
phrase than that, — the word of Jesus, 
" Eternal Life." That implies not mere duration, 
but quality. It blends the present and the future 
in one. It sets before us a state into which we are 
called to enter now, and into which as we enter 
we find ourselves at home in our Father's house, 
beyond the power of doubt and fear. 

George S. Merriam. 

TF the cup of life is full there is little sense of 

past or future; the present is enough. . . . 

When Christ speaks of Eternal Life, he does not 



IMMORTALITY. 85 

mean future endless existence ; this may be in- 
volved, but it is an inference or secondary thought ; 
he means instead fulness or perfection of life. 

Theodore T. Munger. 

TF I were to construct one all-embracing argu- 
A ment for immortality, and were to put it into 
one word, it would be — God. ... It was Christ's 
realization of the living God that rendered his own 
conviction of eternal life so absolute. 

Theodore T. Munger. 

TT TE must rest our hopes on what is deepest, 
" holiest, most divine within us ; and on the 
life and character and affirmations of those most 
exalted specimens of our race who have had the 
most unquestioning faith, connected with the least 
disturbed, the least fanciful, and the least irra- 
tional dispositions and qualities. Jesus, the calm- 
est, sanest, purest, best of souls, the consummate 
flower of humanity, affirmed our personal immor- 
tality with undoubting, unqualified certainty. I 
believe him, not chiefly because he rose from the 
dead, but because he was all alive, immortal, living 
on principle, and for ends that were eternal, from 
the sermon on the mount to the words from the 
cross. I have the witness in myself that he was 



86 LEA VES OF HEALING. 

the Son of God ; his words find my inmost heart, 
his affirmations evoke and clarify my own. " I 
know that my Redeemer" — namely God, for 
these words were written ages before Christ ap- 
peared — " liveth, and in the latter day shall raise 
me from the dead." Blessed festival, that cele- 
brates a risen Saviour ! Though the tomb had kept 
thy ashes, thy spirit could never have been holden 
of death ! If thou wert so pure and instinct with 
immortality that thy very dust was made heavenly 
and flew to heaven with thy spirit, it shall not be 
wholly incredible 1 But we expect no such resurrec- 
tion for our dust, and shall be only too glad to give 
its worn and devitalized particles up to the earth. 
But thy resurrection, thy spiritual triumph over 
death, the spiritual trust in the soul's superiority to 
the mere material clothing it here wears, thy 
abounding confidence in the eternal destiny of our 
moral and rational nature, the sacred prophecy of 
our personality, the eternal unfolding of that bud 
which can put on its higher beauties only under 
the deathly frost that stains its leaves to heavenly 
gold, — this we welcome, this we lean on with our 
w r hole spiritual weight, assured it cannot fail while 
virtue, truth, the moral nature remain, and the 
true and holy God lives in the eternal now and the 
eternal forever ! Henry W. Bellows. 



I MM OR TALITY. 8 7 

TT is indeed a faith which it needs such as Jesus 
to instil. Those who knew him took it in and 
made it real. For us, we drink at the same 
fountain. The promise was not an empty prom- 
ise ; and when the moment comes, when the 
cloud opens and the heaven reveals itself, the 
Comforter, who is the Holy Spirit, speaks to us. 
It speaks to say that the world of God is larger 
than this world of man. The Father of perfect 
love is always training us for that larger life, and 
those fuller powers. When he calls the careful 
thinker who has exhausted earthly processes, or the 
brave leader who has quickened a thousand thou- 
sand lives, nay, the loving boy who has shown me 
what the Kingdom of Heaven is, and what it is 
like, or the unselfish mother whose life has been 
all made up of help and blessing to those around 
her, — when God lifts these into a life unem- 
bodied, and therefore unseen, he teaches me again 
the lesson which Jesus was teaching always. Such 
lives have larger sphere and duty ; for God's pur- 
pose is larger than these cramped places and these 
passing hours. Who lives as they have lived, and 
with such faith as their faith, these never die. 

Edward Everett Hale. 



88 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

"VTES ! earth grows the poorer, Heaven seems 
A more desirable, when our loved ones have 
gone before into the shadowy land. Shadowy, did 
I say ? Nay ! here is the shadowy, there the light 
that blots out the radiance of the sun. Dark with 
excess of brightness that higher world is, because 
our eyes are so weak, our faith so dim. In this 
ever-changing world of phenomena we seem 
shadows pursuing shadows, like the rest. When we 
reach that shore we shall know that truth, which is 
God's thought, and love, which is his life, were the 
only real things we had ever found. Will you not 
live more for these, — less for things that perish in 
the using? Henry Woods Perris. 

I FEEL the unutterable longing, 
Thy hunger of the heart is mine ; 
I reach and grasp for hands in darkness, 
My ear grows sharp for voice or sign. 

O friend, no proof beyond this yearning, 

This outstretch of our hearts, we need ; 
God will not mock the hope He giveth, 

No love He prompts shall vainly plead. 

Then let us stretch our hands in darkness, 
And call our loved ones o'er and o'er ; 

Some day their arms shall close about us, 
And the old voices speak once more. 

John Greenleaf Whittier. 



IMMORTALITY. 89 

I CANNOT doubt that they whom you deplore 
Are glorified ; or if they sleep shall wake 
From sleep, and dwell with God in endless love. 
Hope below this consists not with belief 
In mercy, carried infinite degrees 
Beyond the tenderness of human hearts : 
Hope below this consists not with belief 
In perfect wisdom, guiding mightiest power, 
That finds no limits but its own pure will. 

William Wordsworth. 

A N aureole signifies the artist's despair. He 
■^^ paints his Madonna with his best art and 
choicest colors. But when he has done all there 
is a lack. The spiritual essence has eluded him ; 
and in despair he encircles the head with a ring of 
light/ as if to say, Besides this there was the in- 
effable beauty that cannot be represented on can- 
vas. This ineffable beauty is a reality, — none the 
less real that it cannot be painted, and must be 
represented by the aureole about the head. Think- 
ing upon these intangible realities, thinking how 
real are many things we cannot touch, gives me 
my clearest faith in immortality. David N. Utter. 



A LMOST any right feeling about this present 
"^^ life helps to rectify our feelings about the 
future life. All our best moods feel immortal. 



90 LEA VES OF HEALING. 

Does ever a brave man lay down his life, and feel 
it merely a mortal one ? I think not. For the good 
soul in him will not let itself be thought of so. A 
heart has only to be noble, and of itself it will fill 
with faith. No martyr ever went the way of duty 
and felt the shadow of death upon it. The shadow 
of death is darkest in the valley, which men walk 
in easily, and is never felt at all on a steep place, 
like Calvary. Truth is everlasting, and so is every 
lover of it ; and so he feels himself almost always. 
"To die is nothing to being false. I feel death 
like nothing at all ; and so it is nothing in itself, 
most likely." In battle, let it be for his country 
that a man stands up ; and his brave, noble soul 
makes him feel that there is in him a life, that is 
no more to be touched by cannon-balls than God 
is, or than the Kingdom of Heaven is. 

William Mountford. 



ATHANASIA. 



T 



^HE ship may sink, 
And I may drink 
A hasty death in the bitter sea ; 
But all that I leave 
In the ocean-grave 
Can be slipped and spared, and no loss to me. 



IMMOR TALITY. 9 1 

What care I, 

Though falls the sky, 
And the shrivelling earth to a cinder turn ? 

No fires of doom 

Can ever consume 
What never was made nor meant to burn. 

Let go the breath ! 

There is no death 
To the living soul, nor loss, nor harm. 

Not of the clod 

Is the life of God : 
Let it mount, as it will, from form to form. 

Charles G. Ames. 



ROCKED in the cradle of the deep, 
I lay me down in peace to sleep ; 
Secure I rest upon the wave, 
For Thou, O Lord ! hast power to save. 

And such the trust that still were mine, 
Though stormy winds swept o'er the brine, 
Or though the tempest's fiery breath 
Roused me from sleep to wreck and death. 

For still I know that safe with Thee 
The spirit of Thy child would be ; 
And calm and peaceful is my sleep, 
Rocked in the cradle of the deep. 

Emma Hart Willard. 



92 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

HPHE unresting floods move by Him also ; the 
sea is His, and He made it. I seem to my- 
self more in his hand than ever when I drift in 
that immensity where power is almost tangible, 
and I can feel the liftings and fallings with which, 
as if I were a child in arms, He tends me. If I 
go down to the depths, He will go with me, and 
instantly I shall be at the land whither I went, with 
the face I waited for shining suddenly upon me. 

What if He say to me, " Thou shalt not cross 
this Jordan "? It will be that He shall bear me 
over into the other Canaan and into the better 
promise. Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney. 



i 



F my bark sink, \ is to another sea. 

William Ellery Channing. 



CIX feet of earth for my body, and the infinite 
^ heaven for my soul, is what I shall soon have. 

Anne du Bourg 
(at sight of the scaffold, and in presence of his executioners). 



HPHE sorrowing son said to the dying Scotch 
A woman, " Is it dark, mother? " " Nay, nay, 
laddie, it is light on the other side." 



IMMORTALITY. 93 

T3Y faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed, 
to go out into a place which he was to receive 
for an inheritance ; and he went out, not knowing 
whither he went. By faith he became a sojourner 
in the land of promise, as in a land not his own, 
dwelling in tents, with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs 
with him of the same promise ; for he looked for 
the city which hath the foundations, whose builder 
and maker is God. 

These all died in faith, not having received the 
promises, but having seen them and greeted them 
from afar, and having confessed that they were 
strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they 
that say such things make it manifest that they are 
seeking after a country of their own. And if in- 
deed they had been mindful of that country from 
which they went out, they would have had oppor- 
tunity to return. But now they desire a better 
country, that is, a heavenly ; wherefore God is not 
ashamed of them, to be called their God ; for he 
hath prepared for them a city. Hebrews xi. 



He ?nade life — and He takes it — but instead 
Gives more j praise the Restorer, Al-Mu'hid ! 

r E who died at Azan sends 
This to comfort faithful friends. 



ff 



94 LEA VES OF HEALING. 

Faithful friends ! it lies, I know, 
Pale and white and cold as snow; 
And ye say, " Abdullah 's dead ! " 
Weeping at my feet and head. 
I can see your falling tears, 
I can hear your cries and prayers ; 
Yet I smile, and whisper this : 
" I am not that thing you kiss ; 
Cease your tears, and let it lie ; 
It was mine, it is not I." 

Sweet friends ! what the women lave, 
For the last sleep of the grave, 
Is a tent which I am quitting, 
Is a garment no more fitting, 
Is a cage from which, at last, 
Like a bird my soul hath passed. 
Love the inmate, not the room ; 
The wearer, not the garb ; the plume 
Of the eagle, not the bars 
Which kept him from the splendid stars. 

Loving friends ! be wise, and dry 
Straightway every weeping eye ; 
What ye lift upon the bier 
Is not worth a wistful tear. 
'Tis an empty sea-shell, one 
Out of which the pearl is gone ; 
The shell is broken, it lies there ; 
The pearl, the all, the soul, is here. 
'T is an earthen jar whose lid 
Allah sealed, the while it hid 



IMMORTALITY. 95 

That treasure of His treasury, 
A mind which loved Him ; let it lie ! 
Let the shard be earth's once more, 
Since the gold shines in His store ! 

Allah Mu'hid, Allah good ! 
Now thy grace is understood ; 
Now the long, long darkness ends, 
Yet ye wail, my foolish friends, 
While the man whom ye call " dead " 
In unspoken bliss instead 
Lives, and loves you ; lost, 't is true, 
To the light which shines for you ; 
But in light ye cannot see 
Of unfulfilled felicity, 
And enlarging paradise, 
Lives the life that never dies. 

Farewell, friends ! Yet not farewell ; 
Where I am, ye too shall dwell. 
I am gone before your face 
A heart-beat's time, a gray ant's pace. 
When ye come where I have stepped, 
Ye will marvel why ye wept, 
Ye will know, by true love taught, 
That here is all, and there is naught. 
Weep awhile, if ye are fain, 
Sunshine still must follow rain ! 
Only not at death, for death — 
Now I see — is that first breath 
Which our souls draw when we enter 
Life, which is of all life centre. 



96 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

Know ye Allah's law is love, 
Viewed from Allah's Throne above : 
Be ye firm of trust, and come 
Bravely onwa&d to your home ! 
" La Allah ilia Allah ! Yea, 
Mu'hid ! Restorer ! Sovereign ! " say ! 

He who died at A z an gave 

This to those who made his grave. 

Edwin Arnold. 

From the Arabic. 



THE DESERTED HOUSE. 

IIFE and Thought have gone away 
~> Side by side, 
Leaving door and windows wide : 
Careless tenants they ! 

All within is dark as night : 
In the windows is no light ; 
And no murmur at the door, 
So frequent on its hinge before. 

Close the door, the shutters close, 
Or thro' the windows we shall see 
The nakedness and vacancy 

Of the dark deserted house. 



IMMORTALITY. 97 

Come away : no more of mirth 

Is here or merry-making sound. 
The house was builded of the earth, 

And shall fall again to ground. 

Come away : for Life and Thought 
Here no longer dwell ; 
But in a city glorious — 
A great and distant city — have bought 
A mansion incorruptible. 
Would they could have stayed with us ! 

Alfred Tennyson. 

GREEN PASTURES AND STILL WATERS. 

CLEAR in memory's silent reaches 
Lie the pastures I have seen, 
Greener than the sun-lit spaces 

Where the May has flung her green : 
Needs no sun and needs no starlight 

To illume these fields of mine, 
For the glory of dead faces 

Is the sun, the stars, that shine. 

More than one I count my pastures 

As my life-path groweth long ; 
By their quiet waters straying 

Oft I lay me, and am strong. 
And I call each by its giver, 

And the dear names bring to them 
Glory as from shining faces 

In some New Jerusalem. 
7 



98 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

Yet, O well I can remember, 

Once I called my pastures, Pain, 
And their waters were a torrent 

Sweeping through my life amain ! 
Now I call them Peace and Stillness, 

Brightness of all Happy Thought, 
Where I linger for a blessing 

From my faces that are nought. 

Nought ? I fear not. If the Power 

Maketh thus his pastures green, 
Maketh thus his quiet waters, 

Out of waste his heavens serene, 
I can trust the mighty Shepherd 

Loseth none he ever led ; 
Somewhere yet a greeting waits me 

On the faces of my dead ! 

William C. Gannett. 



MY DEAD. 

I CANNOT think of them as dead 
Who walk with me no more ; 
Along the path of life I tread 
They have but gone before. 

The Father's house is mansioned fair 

Beyond my vision dim ; 
All souls are his, and here or there 

Are living unto him. 



IMMORTALITY. 99 

And still their silent ministry 

Within my heart hath place, 
As when on earth they walked with me 

And met me face to face. 

Their lives are made forever mine ; 

What they to me have been 
Hath left henceforth its seal and sign 

Engraven deep within. 

Mine are they by an ownership 
Nor time nor death can free ; 
For God hath given to Love to keep 

Its own eternally. 

Frederick L. Hosmer. 



A REQUIEM. 

INTO the eternal shadow 
That girds our life around, 
Into the infinite silence 

Wherewith Death's shore is bound. 
Thou hast gone forth, beloved ! 
And I were mean to weep, 
That thou hast left Life's shadows, 
And dost possess the Deep. 

Now I can see thee clearly; 

The dusky cloud of clay, 
That hid thy starry spirit, 

Is rent and blown away : 



100 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

To earth I give thy body, 

Thy spirit to the sky, 
I saw its bright wings growing, 

And knew that thou must fly. 

Now I can love thee truly, 

For nothing comes between 
The senses and the spirit, 

The seen and the unseen ; 
Lifts the eternal shadow, 

The silence bursts apart, 
And the soul's boundless future 

Is present in my heart. 

James Russell Lowell. 



i 



SHALL clasp thee again, O soul of my soul, 
And with God be the rest. 

Robert Browning. 



AND, O beloved voices, upon which 
Ours passionately call, because erelong 
Ye brake off in the middle of that song 
We sang together softly, to enrich 
The poor world with the sense of love, and witch 
The heart out of things evil — I am strong, 
Knowing ye are not lost for aye. . . . 

God keeps a niche 
In heaven to hold our idols : and albeit 
He brake them to our faces, and denied 
That our close kisses should impair their white — 



IMMOR TA LITY. I O I 

I know we shall behold them raised, complete, 
The dust swept from their beauty, — glorified 
New Memnons singing in the great God-light. 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 

GOD does not send us strange flowers every year. 
When the spring blows o'er the pleasant places 
The same dear things lift up the same fair faces ; 
The violet is here. 

It all comes back, — the odor, grace, and hue ; 

Each sweet relation of its life repeated ; 

No blank is left ; no looking for is cheated ; 
It is the thing we knew. 

So after the death-winter it must be 

God will not pat strange signs in the heavenly 

places ; 

The old love shall look out from the old faces. 

Veilchen ! I shall have thee ! 

Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney. 



i 



S it well w r ith the child ? And she answered, It 
is well. 2 Kings iv. 26. 



A GREATER love than yours watched over him 
^* and has taken him away. Why he was 
taken in the dawn of his being we cannot tell. 
The secrets of that world into which he has en- 
tered can alone explain it. Our world does not 
seem to have been intended for the education of 



102 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

all. To many it is only a birthplace. They are 
born to be translated, to receive their education 
elsewhere. Can we not trust our loving Father 
to choose the place where his children shall be 
trained? Is it not enough that they are in his 
hands? William Ellery Channing. 

LIFTED OVER. 

AS tender mothers guiding baby steps, 
Where places come at which the tiny feet 
Would trip, lift up the little ones in arms 
Of love, and set them down beyond the harm, 
So did our Father watch the precious boy, 
Led o'er the stones by me, who stumbled oft 
Myself, but strove to help my darling on : 
He saw the sweet limbs faltering, and saw 
Rough ways before us, where my arms would fail ; 
So reached from heaven, and lifting the dear child, 
Who smiled in leaving me, he put him down, 
Beyond all hurt, beyond my sight, and bade 
Him wait for me! Shall I not then be glad, 
And, thanking God, press on to overtake ? 



H. H. 



SADNESS AND GLADNESS. 

THERE was a glory in my house, 
And it is fled ; 
There was a baby at my heart, 
And it is dead. 



IMMORTALITY. 103 

And when I sit and think of him, 

I am so sad, 
That half it seems that never more 

Can I be glad. 

If you had known this baby mine, 

He was so sweet 
You would have gone a journey just 

To kiss his feet. 

You cannot think how many things 

He learned to know 
Before the swift, swift angel came, 

And bade him go. 

But should you ask me how it is 

That yours can stay, 
Though mine must spread his little wings 

And fly away, 

I could but say that God, who made 

This heart of mine, 
Must have intended that its love 

Should be the sign 

Of His own love ; and that if He 

Can think it right 
To turn my joy to sorrow, and 

My day to night, 

I cannot doubt that He will turn, 

In other ways, 
My winter darkness to the light 

Of summer days. 



104 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

I know that God gives nothing to 

Us for a day ; 
That what He gives He never cares 

To take away. 

And when He comes and seems to make 

Our glory less, 
It is that, by and by, we may 

The more confess 

That He has made it brighter than 

It was before, — 
A glory shining on and on 

For evermore. 

And when I sit and think of this, 

I am so glad, 
That half it seems that never more 

Can I be sad. 

John W. Chadwick. 

" C^ OD lent him and takes him, 1 ' you sigh ! 
v^ Nay, there let me break with your pain ; 
God 's generous in giving, say I — 
And the thing which He gives, I deny 
That He ever can take back again. 

He 's ours and forever. Believe, 

O father ! — O mother, look back 
To the first love's assurance. To give 
Means with God not to tempt or deceive 
With a cup thrust in Benjamin's sack. 



IMMORTALITY. 105 

He gives what He gives. Be content! 

He resumes nothing given — be sure ! 
God lend ? Where the usurers lent 
In His temple, indignant He went 

And scourged away all those impure. 

He lends not ; but gives to the end, 
As He loves to the end. If it seem 

That He draws back a gift, comprehend 

'T is to add to it rather — amend, 
And finish it up to your dream ; — 

Or keep, — as a mother may toys 

Too costly, though given by herself, 
Till the room shall be stiller from noise, 
And the children more fit for such joys, 
Kept over their heads on the shelf. 

So look up, friends ! you, who indeed 

Have possessed in your house a sweet piece 
Of the Heaven which men strive for, must need 
Be more earnest than others are — speed 
Where they loiter, persist where they cease. 

You know how one angel smiles there. 

Then courage ! 'T is easy for you 
To be drawn by a single gold hair 
Of that curl, from earth's storm and despair 

To the safe place above us. Adieu. 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 



106 LEAVES OF HEALING. 



THE ALPINE SHEEP. 

WHEN on my ear your loss was knelled, 
And tender sympathy upburst, 
A little spring from memory welled 

Which once had quenched my bitter thirst; 

And I was fain to bear to you 

A portion of its mild relief, 
That it might be as cooling dew 

To steal some fever from your grief. 

After our child's untroubled breath 

Up to the Father took its way, 
And on our home the shade of death 

Like a long twilight haunting lay, 

And friends came round with us to weep 

The little spirit's swift remove — 
This story of the Alpine sheep 

Was told to us by one we love. 

They, in the valley's sheltering care, 
Soon crop their meadow's tender prime, 

And when the sod grows brown and bare, 
The shepherd strives to make them climb 

To airy shelves of pasture green 
That hang along the mountain side, 

Where grass and flowers together lean, 

And down through mists the sunbeams glide, 



IMMORTALITY. 107 

But nought can lure the timid things 
The steep and rugged path to try ; 

Though sweet the shepherd calls and sings, 
And seared below the pastures lie ; — 

Till in his arms their lambs he takes, 

Along the dizzy verge to go, 
When, heedless of the rifts and breaks, 

They follow on o'er rock and snow. 

And in those pastures lifted fair, 
More dewy soft than lowland mead, 

The shepherd drops his tender care, 
And sheep and lambs together feed. 

This parable by nature breathed, 
Blew on me as the south wind free 

O'er frozen brooks that float unsheathed 
From icy thraldom to the sea. 

A blissful vision through the night 
Would all my happy senses sway, 

Of the good shepherd on the height, 
Or climbing up the starry way, 

Holding our little lamb asleep — 

And like the burden of the sea 
Sounded that voice along the deep, 

Saying, " Arise, and follow me ! " 

Maria White Lowell. 



108 LEAVES OF HEALING. 



A YEAR IN HEAVEN. 

A YEAR in heaven for her, — what is she learning 
Of holy things, of things divine and true ? 
What glorious visions there are still unfolding 
Which here she never knew? 

Did angel friends await her at her coming? 
Did angel faces greet her with a smile ? 
Were all the dear ones eager to receive her 
Whom she had lost awhile? 

And has she seen the loving, blessed Jesus, 
Sat at his feet or felt his fond embrace ? 
Or even can it be that she is able 
To see the Father's face ? 

A year on earth for us without her presence, — 
A year of loneliness and grief and pain ; 
But still we smile amid our tears, in thinking 
Our loss is but her gain. 

We miss her in our joys and in our sorrows : 
She was our life, our centre, and our sun. 
And yet we would not call her back, but whisper, 
" O God, thy will be done ! " 

A year in heaven for her, of rest and blessing : 
For us a year on earth, with her above. 
But heaven and earth are both together blending, 
And over all is Love ! 

M. L. D. 



IMMOR TALI TV. \ 09 



THE GATHERING PLACE. 

I KNOW not where, beneath, above, 
The gathering place so wonderful, 
But all who fill our life with love, 

Go forth to make it beautiful. 
Oh, rich with all the wealth of grace, 
Oh, bright with many a holy face, 
Is that exalted meeting place. 

With passing months it comes more near, 

It grows more real day by day ; 
Not strange or cold, but very dear, 

The glad home-land not far away ! 
Where no sea toucheth, making moan, 
Where none are poor, or sick, or lone, 
The place where we shall find our own. 

And as we think of all we knew, 

Who there have met, and part no more, 
Our longing hearts desire home, too, 
With all the strife and trouble o'er. 
So poor this world, now they have gone, 
We scarcely dare to think upon 
The years before our rest is won. 

And yet our Father knoweth best, 
The joy or sadness that we need, 

The time when we may take our rest 
And be from sin and sorrow freed. 



HO LEAVES OF HEALING. 

So we will wait with patient grace, 
Till in that blessed gathering place, 
We meet our friends and see His face. 

Anon. 



I LONG for household voices gone, 
For vanished smiles I long, 
But God hath led my dear ones on, 
And he can do no wrong. 

I know not what the future hath 

Of marvel or surprise, 
Assured alone that life and death 

His mercy underlies. 

And if my heart and flesh are weak 

To bear an untried pain, 
The bruised reed He will not break, 

But strengthen and sustain. 

And so beside the Silent Sea 

I wait the muffled oar ; 
No harm from Him can come to me 

On ocean or on shore. 

I know not where His islands lift 

Their fronded palms in air ; 
I only know I cannot drift 

Beyond His love and care. 

John Greenleaf Whittter. 



IMMORTALITY. 1 1 1 



WHAT is there beyond ? 
Hear what the wise and good have said. Beyond 
That belt of darkness, still the Years roll on 
More gently, but with not less mighty sweep. 
They gather up again and softly bear 
All the sweet lives that late were overwhelmed 
And lost to sight, all that in them was good, 
Noble, and truly great, and worthy of love — 
The lives of infants and ingenuous youths, 
Sages, and saintly women who have made 
Their households happy ; all are raised and borne 
By that great current in its onward sweep, 
Wandering and rippling with caressing waves 
Around green islands with the breath 
Of flowers that never wither. So they pass 
From stage to stage along the shining course 
Of that bright river, broadening like a sea. 
As its smooth eddies curl along their way 
They bring old friends together ; hands are clasped 
In joy unspeakable ; the mother's arms 
Again are folded round the child she loved 
And lost. Old sorrows are forgotten now, 
Or but remembered to make sweet the hour 
That overpays them ; wounded hearts that bled 
Or broke are healed forever. In the room 
Of this grief -shadowed present, there shall be 
A Present in whose reign no grief shall gnaw 
The heart, and never shall a tender tie 



112 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

Be broken ; in whose reign the eternal Change 
That waits on growth and action shall proceed 
With everlasting Concord hand in hand. 

William Cullen Bryant. 



NO seas again shall sever, 
No desert intervene, 
No deep sad-flowing river 

Shall roll its tide between. 
Love and unsevered union 

Of soul with those we love, 
Nearness and glad communion, 
Shall be our joy above. 

No dread of wasting sickness, 

No thought of ache or pain, 
No weary hours of weakness, 

Shall mar our peace again. 
No death, our homes o'ershading, 

Shall e'er our harps unstring ; 
For all is life unfading 

In presence of our King. 

HORATIUS BONAR. 



TN what body do they come? not in the body of 

flesh and blood. Rather is it reasonable to 

suppose that, as there is a natural body and also a 

spiritual body, so the latter, or its immortal germ, 



IMMOR TALITY. 1 1 3 

is even now tabernacling in the former ; and that 
at death it is disengaged from its companion clay, 
and stands forth at once unharmed by fire or 
sword, by accident or disease, its texture and 
organization finer and more delicate than we can 
now conceive. And this is the resurrection. Nor 
in the " house from heaven " with which the soul 
is thus "clothed upon," does it lose for a moment 
its sure identity. Character gives to these earthly 
lineaments its own appropriate moral expression. 
More fully yet shall it shine through and reveal 
itself in the spiritual countenance. 

Alfred P. Putnam. 

f ET not your heart be troubled ; ye believe in 
God, believe also in me. In my Father's 
house are many mansions ; if it were not so, I 
would have told you ; for I go to prepare a place 
for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, 
I come again, and will receive you unto myself; 
that where I am, there ye may be also. 

Peace I leave with you ; my peace I give unto 
you : not as the world giveth, give I unto you. 
Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be 
afraid. 

If ye loved me ye would have rejoiced, because 
I go unto the Father. 

8 



114 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

Ye now have sorrow : but I will see you again, 
and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no one 
taketh away from you. 

These things have I spoken unto you, that in 
me ye may have peace. Jesus. 



OH, for the peace that floweth as a river, 
Making life's desert places bloom and smile ; 
Oh, for that faith to grasp the glad Forever, 
Amid the shadows of earth's little while ! 

A little while for patient vigil keeping, 

To face the storm, to wrestle with the strong ; 

A little while to sow the seed with weeping, 

Then bind the sheaves and sing the harvest song ; 

A little while to wear the veil of sadness, 
To toil with weary step through miry ways, 

Then to pour forth the fragrant oil of gladness, 
And clasp the girdle round the robe of Praise ; 

A little while, 'mid shadow and illusion, 
To strive by faith love's mysteries to spell, 

Then read each dark enigma's bright solution, 

Then hail sight's verdict, — He doth all things well ; 

A little while the earthen pitcher taking 

To wayside brooks, from far-off mountains fed, 

Then the cool lip its thirst forever slaking 
Beside the fulness of the Fountain-head ; 



IMMOR TALITY. 1 1 5 

A little while to keep the oil from failing, 
A little while faith's flickering lamp to trim, 

And then the Bridegroom's coming footsteps hailing, 
To haste to meet him with the bridal hymn. 

And he who is himself the Gift and Giver, 
The future glory, and the present smile, 

With the bright promise of the glad Forever 
Will light the shadows of earth's little while. 

HORATIUS BONAR. 



COME to me, thoughts of heaven, 
My fainting spirit bear 
On your bright wings, by morning given, 
Up to celestial air. 

Away, far, far away, 
From thoughts by passion given, 
Fold me in blue, still, cloudless day, 
O blessed thoughts of heaven ! 

Come in my tempted hour, 
Sweet thoughts, and yet again 
O'er sinful wish and memory shower 
Your soft, effacing rain ; 

Waft me where gales divine 
With dark clouds ne'er have striven, 
Where living founts forever shine, 
O blessed thoughts of heaven ! 

Felicia D. Hemans. 



Il6 LEAVES OF HEALING. 



I 



RAISE 

The song of thanks and praise 
For those obstinate questionings 
Of sense and outward things, 
Fallings from us, vanishings; 
Blank misgivings of a creature 
Moving about in worlds not realized, 
High instincts, before which our mortal nature 
Did tremble, like a guilty thing surprised ! 
For those rich affections, 
Those shadowy intimations, 
Which, be they what they may, 
Are yet the fountain light of all our day, 
Are yet a master light of all our seeing ; 

Uphold us — cherish — and have power to make 
Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
Of the eternal silence : truths that wake, 

To perish never ; 
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor, 

Nor man nor boy, 
Nor all that is at enmity with joy, 
Can utterly abolish or destroy ! 

Hence, in a season of calm weather, 
Though inland far we be, 
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 
Which brought us hither ; 
Can in a moment travel thither, — 
And see the children sport upon the shore, 
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 



IMMOR TALITY. 1 1 7 

Thanks to the human heart by which we live ; 
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears ; 
To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 

William Wordsworth. 



T3EHOLD what manner of love the Father hath 
^ bestowed upon us, that we should be called 
children of God. 

I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy 
likeness. 

Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have 
entered into the heart of man, the things which 
God hath prepared for them that love him. 



NEED it is we raise our eyes 
Up from earth towards the skies ; 
Thinking of the souls that rest 
In the mansions of the blest ; 
Lest we faint in our distress, 
Through exceeding heaviness. 

Thee in them, O Lord most high, 
Them in Thee we glorify : 
Noble athletes, that went home 
Through the sea of martyrdom ; 
And the saints, through toil and shame 
Brave confessors of thy name. 



1 1 8 LEA VES OF HEALING. 

Glory, Lord, to Thee alone, 
Who hast glorified thine own ; 
For their zeal, their truth, their sighs, 
Prayerful hearts and tearful eyes, 
Faithful lips and fearless breast, 
Love and beauty, toils and rest ! 

Let their praises, heavenly King, 
Let the blessed hymn they sing, 
Some, though faintest, echo gain 
In our own poor broken strain ; 
Till one day shall join all powers 
In one anthem, — theirs and ours. 

John Mason Neale. 



FOR all the saints, who from their labors rest, 
Who thee by faith before the world confessed, 
Thy name, O God, shall be forever blessed. 

Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress, and their 

Might ; 
Their Strength and Shield in all the well-fought fight ; 
Thou, in the darkness, still the Light of light. 

O blest Communion, fellowship divine ! 
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine ; 
Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine. 

William Walsham How. 



IMMORTALITY. 119 



SOMETIME and Somewhere shall we walk 
Clear of earth in high places ; 
Sometime and somewhere shall we talk 
With our hearts in our faces ; 

And see all the meaning writ clear, 

The depth and the sweetness, 
Apart from this doubt and this fear, 

This sad incompleteness. 

Nora Perry. 



What is excellent, 
As God lives, is permanent ; 
Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain ; 
Heart's love will meet thee again. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

Of those whom thou hast given me I have not lost 

one. 

Jesus. 



THE FAMILY ON EARTH AND IN 
HEAVEN. 



THE FAMILY ON EARTH AND IN 
HEAVEN 

Lo ! at length the True Light, — light for every man 
born into the world ; kindling the faces of them that 
receive it, till they become the sons of God. 

No longer is the dwelling of Eternal Life too bright 
above, and the perishable world too dark below. Thou 
hast made one family, there and here ; one living com- 
munion of seen and unseen. Canticles. 

Lo ! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the 
world. 

Where two or three are gathered together in my 
name, there am I in the midst of them. Jesus. 



T THINK we do not begin to realize as we ought 
* what ministries cluster round our life, to aid 
us in being what we may be, — angels, angels, 
every one, thick about us every day, bearing us in 
their hands, and lifting us up when we are fallen. 
Their faces "gladden us when we do well, and grow 
very sad at us when we sin. Ay, and in some way 



124 THE FAMILY ON EARTH 

those that we think of and speak of as in heaven 
love us still with all the old love of earth and all 
the new love of heaven together. So, because 
they love us still, we are still one, our souls are in 
theirs and they in ours. We touch hands in spirit, 
and the light that is not the light of the sun covers 
and enfolds us all. Robert Collyer. 



TV If AN, in the great plan of Providence, is not 
^^ transferred from one sphere of being into 
another. Rather is he brought into conscious re- 
lations to a higher and yet higher sphere, by the 
successive development of his original powers. 
. . . The spiritual world is not a realm far off in 
space, into which we shall be introduced by the 
event of death. Rather is it that order of being 
of which we are to have cognizance by the powers 
that already wait within us, and death will not so 
much remove us, as remove from us the obstruc- 
tions that closed us in from its unseen illumina- 
tions. . . . Was the spot where the patriarch slept 
indeed more holy than other places, and was the 
bush of Moses the only symbol of angelic ministra- 
tions? Or rather could we see as they saw, would 
not every spot be holy, and all nature seem aglow 
with those activities which run from the spiritual 



AND IN HEAVEN. 12$ 

world into the natural? Was the Saviour of men 
an example in temptation only, or was he not 
also our example in victory, revealing unto us 
those heavenly auxiliaries that work with us and 
strengthen us as we toil up the hill of Difficulty 
toward the regions of Peace ? And on the mount 
of transfiguration, was the change in him, so that 
he appeared as never before, or was it in his dis- 
ciples, so that they saw him as he always had been, 
living in two worlds, walking on the earth, and yet 
" the son of man who is in heaven," talking with 
men, yet holding converse with the skies ? 

Man could not be the subject of such revela- 
tions unless already he lived within the precincts 
of the mystic world, and had a faculty within him 
to be acted upon by its essential laws. These con- 
cealments of matter which engird us are therefore 
but frail walls that shut us in, which, falling down, 
give us sight of those higher skies that arch over 
us, and those brighter fields that lie around us trod- 
den by the feet of angels, and over which breathe 
the airs of celestial love. Edmund H. Sears. 

'"PHERE are many sayings of Jesus, and inci- 

A dents in his life, which imply the intimate 

communion of the dead with the living. One of 

the most striking features of his life is the fre- 



126 THE FAMILY ON EARTH 

quency and nearness of his converse with the 
spiritual world. He never speaks of angels and 
just men made perfect as if there were a weary 
distance to be crossed from them to us or from us 
to them. They are often with him, — at his birth, 
in his temptation, and in his agony; they come 
uncalled, they watch by his sepulchre, and wait on 
his ascension. The spirits of the long-dead talk 
with him on the mountain. His voice to the 
widow's son, his powerful word at the tomb of 
Lazarus, seem addressed to souls not afar off, but 
within call, — near the scenes from which they 
had gone, and among the friends who thought 
them lost forever. He promises also his own 
spiritual presence with his followers, when he shall 
no longer be visible to the outward eye. 

Andrew P. Peabody. 

T LOVE to look on the transfiguration, and on 
*• similar scenes in our Saviour's pilgrimage, as 
but revelations, manifestations of the spiritual life, 
which in numberless forms perpetually surrounds 
us. Heaven, I believe, is not afar off, but un- 
speakably near, compassing our homes, encircling 
our daily ways. There is no doubt constantly 
about us a cloud of unseen spirits, — the hosts of 
God encamp around our dwellings, — strains of 



AND IN HEAVEN 12/ 

celestial praise, such as hailed the Saviour's birth, 
are always borne, though unheard, on our night 
air, — 

" Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth 
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep." 

It was no rare thing, though an amazing sight, 
when Elisha beheld angelic hosts drawn out for his 
defence. Nor had the hills of Judea grown un- 
familiar to Moses and Elijah, who on the mount 
" appeared in glory." The whole tenor of Scrip- 
ture brings the two worlds together, makes us feel 
that they are as one world, — that our departed 
friends, and the wise and holy of all times, may be 
around us and with us. Andrew P. Peabody. 



T)E of comfort ! Thou art not alone if thou 
*** have faith. Spake we not of a Communion 
of Saints, unseen, yet not unreal, accompanying 
and brother-like embracing thee, so thou be 
worthy? Their heroic sufferings rise up melo- 
diously together to heaven, out of all lands, and 
out of all times, as a sacred Miserere ; their heroic 
actions also, as a boundless, everlasting psalm of 
triumph. Thomas Carlyle. 



128 THE FAMILY ON EARTH 



THE spirit world around this world of sense 
Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere 
Wafts through these earthly mists and vapors dense 
A vital breath of more ethereal air. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 



II fE think about the things in this world that 
* we have never seen much as we believe in 
the things of the other world. ... I shall know, 
I think, better than I have ever known, how real 
the things may be that lie upon that other side, to 
which men cross but once, and come not back, nor 
send to us with stories of their travel. I shall be 
able to think that life and love, like the planet, are 
round ; and that though we lose them out of our little 
horizon, nothing that holds to them by the eternal 
gravitation ever falls away. ... I shall feel, too, 
how certain it must be, after all, that from out that 
heavenly morning, sweet words and breaths are 
sent back into our waiting twilights, — writings 
are made in our hearts of the blessed things 
that they walk in the midst of, in that near, fair 
Other Side. 

Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney. 



AND IN HEAVEN 1 29 



^T^HE truth is as clear and bright to me as is this 
A sunny afternoon that the world of spirits is 
very near to us, just as God and Christ are near ; 
and that we can interchange influences with our 
risen and glorified, as truly as you and I are now 
corresponding across the seas. 

William Henry Channing. 



WHILE, O my heart! as white sails shiver, 
And crowds are passing, and banks stretch wide, 
How hard to follow, with lips that quiver, 
That moving speck on the far-off side ! 

Farther, farther — I see it — know it — 

My eyes brim over, it melts away : 
Only my heart to my heart shall show it 

As I walk desolate day by day. 

And yet I know past all doubting, truly — 
And knowledge greater than grief can dim — 

I know, as he loved, he will love me duly — 
Yea, better — e'en better than I love him. 

And as I walk by the vast, calm river, 

The awful river so dread to see, 
I say, " Thy breadth and thy depth forever 
Are bridged by his thoughts that cross to me." 

Jean Ingelow. 
9 



I30 THE FAMILY ON EARTH 



THE SILENT HOURS. 

AS the storm retreating 
Leaves the vales in peace, 
Let the world's vain noises, 
O'er our spirits cease. 

Now the hours of stillness, 

Wondrous visions show ; 
Heaven unfolds before us, 

Angels come and go. 

Holy, human faces, 

From earth's shadows free, 
Look with love upon us, 

Bid us patient be. 

Almost we discern them, 

Almost read their smile, 
Almost hear them saying — 

" Wait a little while." 

Thus in hours of stillness, 

Faith to Heaven shall rise, 
Till death's last, deep silence 

Quite unseals our eyes. 

Theodore C. Williams. 



AND IN HEAVEN 131 



HE AND SHE. 

" QHE is dead ! " they said to him. " Come away; 
>J Kiss her and leave her; thy love is clay." 

They smoothed her tresses of dark brown hair, 
On her forehead of stone they laid it fair ; 

Over her eyes, which gazed too much, 
They drew the lids with a gentle touch ; 

With a tender touch they closed up well 
The sweet, thin lips, that had secrets to tell ; 

About her brow and beautiful face 
They tied her veil and marriage lace ; 

And drew on her white feet her white silk shoes, — 
Which were the whitest no eye could choose ! 

And over her bosom they crossed her hands ; 
" Come away," they said, " God understands ! " 

And there was silence, and nothing there, 
But silence and scents of eglantere, 

And jasmine and roses and rosemary : 

And they said, " As a lady should lie, lies she." 

And they held their breath as they left the room 
With a shudder to glance at its stillness and gloom. 



132 THE FAMILY ON EARTH 

But he, who loved her too well to dread 
The sweet, the stately, the beautiful dead, 

He lit his lamp and took the key 

And turned it. Alone agam — he and she. 

He and she ; yet she would not smile, 
Though he called the name she loved erewhile. 

He and she ; yet she did not move 
To any one passionate whisper of love. 

Then he said, " Cold lips and breast without breath, 
Is there no voice, no language of death ? 

" Dumb to the ear and still to the sense, 
But to heart and to soul distinct, intense 

"See, now ; I will listen with soul, not ear ; 
What was the secret of dying, dear ? 

" Was it the infinite wonder of all 

That you ever could let life's flower fall ? 

" Or was it a greater marvel to feel 
The perfect calm o'er the agony steal ? 

" Was the miracle greater to find how deep 
Beyond all dreams, sank downward that sleep ? 

" Did life roll back its record, dear, 

And show, as they say it does, past things clear ? 

" And was it the innermost heart of the bliss, 
To find out so what a wisdom love is? 



AND IN HEAVEN 1 33 

" O perfect dead ! O dead most dear, 
I hold the breath of my soul to hear ! 

" I listen as deep as to horrible hell, 

As high as to heaven, and you do not tell! 

" There must be pleasure in dying, sweet, 
To make you so placid from head to feet. 

" I would tell you, darling, if I were dead, 
And 't were your hot tears upon my brow shed ; 

" I would say, though the angel of death had laid 
His sword on my lips to keep it unsaid ; 

" You should not ask vainly with streaming eyes, 
Which of all death's was the chiefest surprise, 

" The very strangest and suddenest thing 
Of all the surprises that dying must bring." 

Ah, foolish world ! O most kind dead ! 
Tho' he told me, who will believe it was said ? 

Who will believe that he heard her say 

With the sweet, soft voice in the dear old way ? — 

" The utmost wonder is this — I hear 

And see you, and love you and kiss you, dear, 

" And am your angel, who was your bride, 
And know, tho' dead, I have never died." 

Edwin Arnold. 



134 THE FAMILY ON EARTH 



THE CHANGELING. 

I HAD a little daughter, 
And she was given to me 
To lead me gently backward 

To the Heavenly Father's knee, 
That I, by the force of nature, 

Might in some dim wise divine 
The depth of his infinite patience 
To this wayward soul of mine. 

I know not how others saw her, 

But to me she was wholly fair, 
And the light of the heaven she came from 

Still lingered and gleamed in her hair; 
For it was as wavy and golden, 

And as many changes took, 
As the shadows of sun-gilt ripples 

On the yellow bed of a brook. 

To what can I liken her smiling 

Upon me, her kneeling lover? 
How it leaped from her lips to her eyelids, 

And dimpled her wholly over, 
Till her outstretched hands smiled* also, 

And I almost seemed to see 
The very heart of her mother 

Sending sun through her veins to me ! 



AND IN HEAVEN. 1 35 

She had been with us scarce a twelvemonth, 

And it hardly seemed a day, 
When a troop of wandering angels 

Stole my little daughter away ; 
Or perhaps those heavenly Zingari 

But loosed the hampering strings, 
And when they had opened her cage-door 

My little bird used her wings. 

But they left in her stead a changeling, 

A little angel child, 
That seems like her bud in full blossom, 

And smiles as she never smiled ; 
When I wake in the morning, I see it 

Where she always used to lie, 
And I feel as weak as a violet 

Alone 'neath the awful sky. 

As weak, yet as trustful also ; 

For the whole year long I see 
All the wonders of faithful Nature 

Still worked for the love of me ; 
Winds wander, and dews drip earthward, 

Rain falls, suns rise and set, 
Earth whirls, and all but to prosper 

A poor little violet. 

The child is not mine as the first was, 

I cannot sing it to rest, 
I cannot lift it up fatherly 

And bless it upon my breast ; 



136 THE FAMILY ON EARTH 

Yet it lies in my little one's cradle 
And sits in my little one's chair, 

And the light of the heaven she 's gone to 
Transfigures its golden hair. 

James Russell Lowell. 



FOOTSTEPS OF ANGELS. 

WHEN the hours of Day are numbered, 
And the voices of the Night 
Wake the better soul, that slumbered, 
To a holy, calm delight ; 

Ere the evening lamps are lighted, 
And like phantoms grim and tall, 

Shadows from the fitful fire-light 
Dance upon the parlor wall ; 

Then the forms of the departed 

Enter at the open door ; 
The beloved, the true-hearted, 

Come to visit me once more ; 

He, the young and strong, who cherished 
Noble longings for the strife, 

By the roadside fell and perished, 
Weary with the march of life ! 

They, the holy ones and weakly, 

Who the cross of suffering bore, 

Folded their pale hands so meekly, 
Spake with us on earth no more ! 



AND IN HEAVEN 1 37 

And with them the Being Beauteous, 
Who unto my youth was given, 

More than all things else to love me, 
And is now a saint in heaven. 

With a slow and noiseless footstep 

Comes that messenger divine, 
Takes the vacant chair beside me, 

Lays her gentle hand in mine. 

And she sits and gazes at me 

With those deep and tender eyes, 

Like the stars, so still and saint-like, 
Looking downward from the skies. 

Uttered not, yet comprehended, 

Is the spirit's voiceless prayer, 
Soft rebukes, in blessings ended, 

Breathing from her lips of air. 

O, though oft depressed and lonely, 

All my fears are laid aside, 
If I but remember only 

Such as these have lived and died ! 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 



O FAITHFUL heart ! sweet peace hast thou 
In God's eternal bosom now ! 
Dust sinks to dust in calm repose ; 
Into its rest the spirit goes. 



138 THE FAMILY ON EARTH 

The love that was thy life while here 

Is now thy heavenly atmosphere; 

God's heaven enspheres us round, and thou, 

In Him, art nearer to us how. 

So then we cry, Farewell, and Hail ! 
Brave heart, thy work shall never fail; 
And we who here a friend deplore, 
Have gained in heaven one angel more. 

Charles T. Brooks. 



Y\ THAT a momentous interest is given to our 
whole earthly life by the thought that it is 
passed in the presence and communion of the 
whole spiritual family ! To my mind there is 
hardly a text of Scripture, or form of speech, that 
rolls on with such a depth and fulness of meaning 
as these words : " Seeing that we are compassed 
about with so great a cloud of witnesses." Vast 
and bewildering is the philosophical speculation 
which tells us that we cannot lift a finger without 
moving the distant spheres. But far more grand 
and unspeakably solemn is the thought that our 
daily lives, our conduct in lowly and sheltered 
scenes, our speech and walk in the retirement of 
our homes, are felt through the universe of ever- 
living souls, — that the laws of attraction and re- 
pulsion that reach through all orders of being ex- 



AND IN HEAVEN 139 

tend to our least word and deeds, — that in every 
worthy, generous, holy impulse all heaven bears 
part, — that from the trail of our meanness and sel- 
fishness, our waywardness and levity, all heaven 
recoils. Let the august witnesses, the adoring 
multitude, in whose presence we dwell and wor- 
ship, arouse us to growing diligence in duty, and 
awaken in us increasing fervor of spirit, that we 
may run with patience the race that is set before us, 
and, found faithful unto death, may receive the 

crown of life. 

Andrew P. Peabody. 

HPHE seasons when Jesus enjoyed the nearest 
communion with heaven deserves our special 
regard. When was it that angels and glorified 
spirits became manifest in his society? Not when 
the multitudes thronged him, and children sang 
hosannas in the temple, — not during his few and 
brief seasons of ease and outward success. They 
first came to him after his forty days' temptation, 
when he had contended in lonely prayer with 
every allurement which could draw him aside from 
his appointed work. Again, on the mount, came 
Moses and Elijah. And of what talked they with 
him ? Not of crowns, or of applauding multitudes, 
but of his approaching agony and death. Again, 



140 THE FAMILY ON EARTH. 

when in Gethsemane he wrestled with the severest 
powers of evil, and won the victory before his hour 
had come, there appeared an angel from heaven 
strengthening him. Are not these things written 
that heaven may seem nearest to us when trials 
most abound, in loneliness and weariness, in deser- 
tion and agony, — that we may bring the unseen 
world into the clearest view when the power of 
evil is the strongest, and that, when no earthly 
voice gives us comfort or a godspeed, we may 
feel that angels minister to us and glorified spirits 
urge us heavenward? 

Andrew P. Peabody. 



ETERNAL GOODNESS. 



ETERNAL GOODNESS. 

Bless the Lord, O my soul, 
And forget not all his benefits : 
Who forgiveth all thine iniquities ; 
Who healeth all thy diseases ; 
Who redeemeth thy life from destruction ; 
Who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender 
mercies. 

Psalm ciii. 2-4. 



T3LESSED art thou, O Lord, our God ! who 

*^ sustainest the living with beneficence, and 

with great mercy quickenest the dead, supportest 

the fallen, and healest the sick ; thou loosenest 

those who are in bonds, and wilt accomplish thy 

faith unto those who sleep in the dust. Who is 

like unto thee, O Lord of mighty acts ! or who 

can be compared unto thee, who art the King, 

who killest, and restorest to life ; and causest 

salvation to spring forth ! W T ho is like unto thee, 

O merciful Father ! who in mercy rememberest 

thy creatures to life ! 

Ancient Hebrew Ritual. 



144 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

T CANNOT think the future world is to be 
feared, even by the worst of men. I had 
rather die a sinner than live one. Doubtless justice 
is there to be done ; that may seem stern and 
severe. But remember, God's justice is not like a 
man's ; it is not vengeance, but mercy ; not poison, 
but medicine. To me it seems tuition more than 
chastisement. God is not the jailer of the universe, 
but the Shepherd of the people ; not the hangman 
of mankind, but their Physician, — yes, our Father. 
I know his justice is love ; that if I suffer, it is for 
my everlasting joy. . . . Shall God forget his 
child, his frailest or most stubborn child ; leave 
him in endless misery, a prey to insatiate sin? I 
tell you No ; not God. Why, this eccentric earth 
forsakes the sun a while, careering fast and far 
away, but that attractive power prevails at length, 
and the returning globe comes rounding home 
again. . . . Do you tell me that culprit's mother 
loves her son more than God can love him ? Then 
go and worship her. I know that when father and 
mother both forsake me, in the extremity of my 
sin, I know my God loves on. Oh yes, ye sons of 
man, Indian and Greek, ye are right to trust your 
God. No grain of dust gets lost from off this dusty 
globe ; and shall God lose a man from off this 
sphere of souls? Believe it not. 



ETERNAL GOODNESS. 1 45 

I know that suffering follows sin, lasting long 
as the sin. I thank God it is so ; that God's 
own angel stands there to warn back the erring 
Balaams, wandering towards woe. But God, who 
sends the rain, the dew, the sun, on me as on a 
better man, will, at last, I doubt it not, make us 
all pure, all just, all good. ... I expect to suffer 
for each conscious, wilful wrong ; I wish, I hope, 
I long to suffer for it. I am wronged if I do not ; 
what I do not outgrow, live over and forget here, 
I hope to expiate there. I fear a sin, not to out- 
grow a sin. . . . 

Sad and disappointed, full of self-reproach, we 
shall not be so forever. The light of heaven 
breaks upon the night of trial, sorrow, sin. . . . 
The more I live, the more I love this lovely world ; 
feel more its Author in each little thing, in all that 
is great. But yet I feel my immortality the more. 
In childhood the consciousness of immortal life 
buds forth feeble, though full of promise. In the 
man it unfolds its fragrant petals, his most celestial 
flower, to mature its seed throughout eternity. 

Theodore Parker. 



/^OD created man to be immortal, and made 
^-* him to be an image of his own eternity. 
The souls of the righteous are in the hands of 



I46 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

God ; and there shall no torment touch them. In 
the sight of the unwise they seemed to die, and 
their departure is taken for misery, and their going 
from us to be utter destruction. But they are 
in peace, for though they be afflicted in the sight 
of men, yet is their hope full of immortality. 
Having been a little chastened, they shall be 
greatly rewarded, for God proved them and found 
them w r orthy of himself. As gold in the furnace he 
tried them and received them as a burnt offering. 
They shall shine in the time of his visitation and 
shall judge the nations. , They that put their trust 
in him shall understand the truth, and such as be 
faithful shall abide with him in love. 

But the ungodly shall be punished according to 
their own imaginations, and when they cast up the 
account of their sins, they shall fear, and their 
iniquities shall convince them to their face. When 
they see it they shall be troubled and shall be 
amazed at the strangeness of his salvation, beyond 
all that they had looked for. They are scourged 
by the strength of thine arms. It is not possible 
to escape thine hand. Thy incorruptible spirit is 
in all men, therefore chastenest thou them and 
warnest them by putting them in remembrance 
wherein they have offended, that leaving their 
wickedness they may believe on thee, O God. So 



ETERNAL GOODNESS. 1 47 

were they troubled for a short season that they 
might be admonished, having a sign of salvation to 
put them in remembrance of the commandment 
of thy law. 

Thou hast power over life and death : thou 
leadest to the gates of hell and bringest up again, 
and hast made thy children to be of a good hope, 
for thou givest repentance of sin. Thou lovest all 
things which thou hast made : thou sparest all, 
for they are thine, O Lord, thou lover of souls. 
God made not death, neither hath he pleasure 
in the destruction of the wicked. He created 
all things that they might have their being in 
righteousness ; and righteousness is immortal. 

By thy power is the beginning of righteousness, 
and because thou art the Lord of all, it maketh 
thee to be gracious unto all. The true beginning 
of righteousness is the desire of discipline, and 
the end of discipline is love, and love is the keep- 
ing of his laws, and in the keeping of his laws is 
the assurance of immortality. The Holy Spirit of 
Discipline will not abide where righteousness has 
come in. 

Thou, O God, art gracious and true : long- 
suffering, and in mercy ordering all things. For 
if we sin we are thine, knowing thy power : but 
we will not sin, knowing that we are counted thine. 



148 LEAVES OF HEALING 

For to know thee is perfect righteousness : yea, to 
know thy power is the root of immortality. 

The righteous live forevermore : their reward is 
also with the Lord, and the care of them is with 
the Most High. Therefore shall they receive a 
glorious kingdom and a crown of beauty from the 
Lord's hand. Wisdom. 



Our God is a consuming fire. 

r PHE man who loves God, and is not yet pure, 
courts the burning of God. Nor is it always 
torture. The fire shows itself sometimes only as 
light — still it will be fire of purifying. The con- 
suming fire is just the original, the active form of 
Purity, — that which makes pure, that which is 
indeed Love, the creative energy of God. 

The man whose deeds are evil, fears the burn- 
ing. But the burning will not come the less that 
he fears it or denies it. Escape is hopeless. For 
Love is inexorable. Our God is a consuming fire. 
He shall not come out till he has paid the utter- 
most farthing. 

If the man resists the burning of God, the con- 
suming fire of Love, a terrible doom awaits him, 
and its day will come. He shall be cast into the 



ETERNAL GOODNESS. 1 49 

outer darkness who hates the fire of God. What 
sick dismay shall then seize upon him ! Then, if 
the moan of suffering humanity ever reaches the 
ear of the outcast of darkness, he will be ready 
to rush into the very heart of the Consuming Fire 
to know life once more, to change the terror of 
sick negation, of unspeakable death, for that region 
of painful hope. 

The outer darkness is but the most dreadful form 
of the consuming lire — the fire without light — the 
darkness visible, the black flame. God hath with- 
drawn himself, but not lost his hold. His face is 
turned away, but his hand is laid upon him still. 
His heart has ceased to beat into the man's heart, 
but he keeps him alive by his fire. And that fire 
will go searching and burning on in him, as in 
the highest saint who is not yet pure as He is 
pure. 

But at length, O God, wilt thou not cast Death 
and Hell into the lake of Fire — even into thine 
own consuming self? Death shall then die ever- 
lastingly, 

" And Hell itself will pass away, 

And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.' 5 

Then indeed wilt thou be all in all. For then our 
poor brothers and sisters, every one — O God, we 



150 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

trust in thee, the Consuming Fire — shall have 
been burnt clean and brought home. 

As for us, now will we come to thee, our Con- 
suming Fire. And thou wilt not burn us more 
than we can bear. But thou wilt burn us. And 
although thou seem to slay us, yet will we trust in 
thee even for that which thou hast not spoken, if 
by any means we may attain unto the blessedness 
of those who have not seen and yet have believed. 

George Mac Donald. 



TAKE me, O Infinite Cause, and cleanse me of 
wrong ! 
Take me, raise me to higher life through centuries 

long ! 
Cleanse me, by pain, if need be, through aeons of 

days ! 
Take me and purge me, still will I answer with 
praise — 

There is no Death forever ! 

Edwin Morris. 



NOT with hatred's undertow 
Doth the Love Eternal flow ; 
Every chain that spirits wear 
Crumbles in the breath of prayer ; 
And the penitent's desire 
Opens every gate of fire. 



ETERNAL GOODNESS. I 5 I 

Still thy love, O Christ arisen, 
Yearns to reach these souls in prison ! 
Through all depths of sin and loss 
Drops the plummet of thy cross ! 
Never yet abyss was found 
Deeper than that cross could sound ! 

Therefore well may nature keep 
Equal faith with all who sleep, 
Set her watch of hills around 
Christian grave and heathen mound, 
And to cairn and kirkyard send 
Summer's flowery dividend. 

Keep, O pleasant Melvin stream, 
Thy sweet laugh in shade and gleam ! 
On the Indian's grassy tomb 
Swing, O flowers, your bells of bloom ! 
Deep below, as high above, 
Sweeps the circle of God's love. 

John Greenleaf Whittier. 



AND now, as I behold what is the actual sorrow 
^^ of some, and the possible sorrow of all, in 
my sense of this sacred hour, and the solemn light 
that streams from our religion, I bid you hope. Put 
the light in your windows for the wanderers return. 
Keep the old home-love just the same. They will 
come back. They will be yours again. From the 



152 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

distant fields of sin they will come. From un- 
marked graves they will rise, and your sore heart 
will lift itself in a psalm of unspeakable joy. The 
whole creation shall yet put on its new manhood, 
and walk in glory in the Father's house. 

Amos Crum. 

THY erring child may be 
Lost to himself, but never lost to Thee. 

John Greenleaf Whittier. 



Tl fHEN he came to himself he said, I will arise 
and go to my Father. Luke xv. 17, 18. 



The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me. — 
Psalm cxxxviii. 8. 

Pure love is the only eternal fire. — Madame 
Guyon. 



THE FATHER'S WILL. 



THE FATHER'S WILL. 

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies 
of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, 
acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 
And be not fashioned according to this world : but 
be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that 
ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and 
perfect will of God. — Romans xii. i, 2. 

That ye may stand perfect and complete in all the 
will of God. — Col. iv. 12. 



IVTOT as I will, but as Thou wilt. We may re- 
peat these words upon occasions, in hours 
of bereavement. But do they suggest anything 
more to our minds than a silent submission to the 
inevitable ? They have a far, far deeper meaning. 

To accept them as expressing the supreme abid- 
ing law of life, from a heart overflowing with their 
full significance, is the greatest act of which the 
soul of man is capable. 

It is not the annihilation of the human will, it is 
not the mere passive submission of it to a higher 



156 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

Power. It is the realization of a transcendent 
mystery of our being : the exaltation of the human 
will to an identity with the Supreme Will. 

To realize this mystery in one's self, to be con- 
scious that one's own will is identically the Divine 
Will is to be made conscious of the imperishable 
Life and Love and Power of the Supreme Nature, 
and consequently, of a profound sense of being in 
harmony with the whole world of things, of a Peace, 
the Peace of God, down deep in the heart, that 
nothing can reach to destroy. 

Would that we all might know this great truth 
from our own experience ! I trust in God that 
we all shall know it, if not now and here, yet 
hereafter. William H. Furness. 



A SK for no wings to fly from any duties or cares 
"^ God has assigned you. Attack them in the 
front with zeal and patience, with courage and 
faith, and make them allies. Do not think it ne- 
cessary to leave your post, because it is monoto- 
nous, or lonely, or without opportunities. Employ 
your ingenuity in varying its monotony, in break- 
ing up its unsatisfactoriness. Rejoice in the 
demands made upon your gifts and talents. Any- 
thing but longing for dove's wings will do. The 



THE FATHER'S WILL. 1 57 

rest the heart and soul want is in God, — full faith 
in the Father, the Friend, the Inspirer, and the 
Author of our nature and our lot. And no dove 
can carry us nearer to Him than we already are, 
when we humbly, submissively, and patiently do 
His will. Nay, let rather His dove come to us, — 
that Holy Spirit which is God's love and truth and 
will, welcomed and found and felt in our docile 
trusting hearts, — and then that rest which visits 
the soul that is earnest in the Father's business 
will establish itself here and now, even in the midst 
of the most trying and painful circumstances ; and 
we shall want no wings to carry us away, for the 
dove's wings will be folded in a nest which God 
makes full of peace and quietness for us, and for 
himself and his Son, in the bottom of every patient, 
faithful, and active Christian's heart ! 

Henry W. Bellows. 



BLINDFOLDED and alone I stand 
With unknown thresholds on each hand, 
The darkness deepens as I grope, 
Afraid to fear, afraid to hope: 
Yet this one thing I learn to know 
Each day more surely as I go, 
That doors are opened, ways are made, 
Burdens are lifted or are laid, 



1 5 8 LEA VES OF HEALING. 

By some great law, unseen and still, 
Unfathomed purpose to fulfil, 
Not as I will. 

H. H. 



I am glad to think 
I am not bound to make the world go right ; 
But only to discover, and to do, 
With cheerful heart, the work that God appoints. 

I will trust in Him, 
That he can hold His own ; and I will take 
His will, above the work he sendeth me, 

To be my chiefest good. 

Jean Ingelow. 



THE folded hands seem idle : 
If folded at His word, 
'T is a holy service, trust me, 
In obedience to the Lord. 

Anna Shipton. 



IF, for the days to come, this hour 
Of trial hath vicarious power, 
And, blest by Thee, our present pain 
Be Character's eternal gain, 
Thy will be done ! 



THE FATHER'S WILL. 159 

Strike, Thou the Master, we Thy keys, 
The anthem of the destinies ! 
The minor of Thy loftier strain, 
Our hearts shall breathe the old refrain, 
Thy will be done ! 

John Greenleaf Whither. 



T^OREVER the atom sings its tiny song in the 
ear of God, — a song of perfect, infinite con- 
tent ; for it knows that it and its Maker are alike 
perfect. To all eternity, it fulfils His will with 
absolutely unquestioning obedience. Now floating 
in the sunlight, now imprisoned in the petal of a 
flower, now hidden for seeming eternal ages in the 
darkness of the mine, or entombed in the awful 
splendor of the central fires ; now throbbing with 
the sun's inconceivable heat, now chilled by the 
bitter cold of interstellar space, — always and 
everywhere, with equal and unchanged joy, it fills 
its tiny but essential place in the unfathomable 
creation of God. It cannot " serve Him much/' 
but it can serve Him forever, and can " please 
Him perfectly." 

" Wouldst thou the highest life know, the atom can whisper 
its secret ■ 
What that is without will, that be thou, man, with a will.** 

Samuel R. Calthrop. 



l60 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

HHHE great secret of spiritual perfection is ex- 
-* pressed in the words of Saint Ignatius Loyola, 
"Hoc vult Deus." God wishes me to stand at 
this post, to fulfil this duty, to suffer this disease, 
to be afflicted with this calamity, this contempt, 
this vexation. God wishes this, — whatever the 
world and self may dictate, " Hoc vult Deus." — 
His will is my law. Kenelm Henry Digby. 

T3ETTER than resignation, more Christ-like is it 
*^ to have our wills lifted up into oneness with 
the Father's, — to believe that his will contains 
more of blessedness for us than we can ever 
ask. " Lead Thou me on ! " 

Daniel W. Morehouse. 

HPHE thought on which I delight to dwell, as I 
A advance in life, is that God is within me, al- 
ways present to my soul, to teach, to rebuke, to 
aid, to bless, — that he truly desires my salvation 
from all inward evils, — that he is ever ready to 
give his spirit, that there is no part of my lot which 
may not carry me forward to perfection, and that 
outward things are of little or no moment, provided 
this great work of God goes on within. The body 



THE FATHER'S WILL, l6l 

and the world vanish more and more, and the soul, 
the immortal principle, made to bear God's image, 
to partake of His truth, goodness, purity, and hap- 
piness, comes out to my consciousness more and 
more distinctly; and in feeling God's intimate 
presence with this, to enlighten, quicken, and save, 
I find strength and hope and peace. 

William Ellery Channing. 



T REMEMBERED some sentences of Ruskin's 
that had been curiously beautiful to me, just 
from the fact they told ; and now the fact inter- 
preted itself. He explains to us how one of the 
ideas of architecture grew, from observing the out- 
line left, when the rose, or the trefoil, or whatever 
was first traced for carving, had been cut and 
taken away. That which was left was as beautiful 
as the central design. So God shapes the flower 
of beauty in us, and seems perhaps only to reveal 
its glory by a taking away. But he sees how fair 
in the life stands the outline that is left ; how the 
tender curves bend and cling about an emptiness, 
and declare in themselves a wonderful, essential 
grace. He makes that which remains by the same 
stroke which separates and removes; and so he 
chisels and thins and glorifies us, until in the im- 
ii 



1 62 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

mortal aspects in which we shall stand before him, 
only so much of the mere form of being shall re- 
main as shall make it possible for us to hold these 
thoughts of his with which he has been, by depriv- 
ing, filling us. Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney. 



WHAT thou wilt, O Father, give ! 
All is gain that I receive. 
Let the lowliest task be mine, 
Grateful, so the work be Thine ; 
Let me find the humblest place 
In the shadow of Thy grace. 
If there be some weaker one, 
Give me strength to help him on ; 
If a blinder soul there be, 
Let me guide him nearer Thee. 
Make my mortal dreams come true 
With the work I fain would do ; 
Clothe with life the weak intent, 
Let me be the thing I meant ; 
Let me find in Thy employ 
Peace that dearer is than joy ; 
Out of self to love be led, 
And to heaven acclimated. 
Until all things sweet and good 
Seem my natural habitude. 

John Greenleaf Whittier. 



THE FATHER'S WILL, 163 

^T^HOUGH dark my path and sad my lot 
•*- Let me be still and murmur not, 
And breathe the prayer divinely taught, 
" Thy will be done ! " 

Let but my fainting heart be blest 
With thy sweet spirit for its guest, 
My God, to Thee I leave the rest : 
" Thy will be done ! " 

Renew my will from day to day ; 
Blend it with Thine, and take away 
All that now makes it hard to say, 
" Thy will be done ! " 

Charlotte Elliott. 



WE tell Thee of our care, 
Of the sore burden, pressing day by day, 
And in the light and pity of Thy face, 
The burden melts away. 

We breathe our secret wish, 

The importunate longing which no man may see ; 

We ask it humbly, or, more restful still, 

We leave it all to Thee. 

Susan Coolidge. 



MY Father, as Thou wilt : 
Oh, may thy will be mine ! 
Into thy hands of love 
I would my all resign. 



1 64 LEAVES OF HEALING, 

Through sorrow or through joy, 
Conduct me as Thine own, 
And help me still to say, 
Father, Thy will be done. 

My Father, as Thou wilt : 
If needy here and poor, 
Give me Thy people's bread, 
Their portion rich and sure ; 
The manna of thy word 
Let my soul feed upon ; 
And if all else should fail, 
Father, Thy will be done. 

My Father, as Thou wilt: 
All shall be well for me ; 
Each changing future scene, 
I gladly trust with Thee. 
Straight to my home above, 
I travel calmly on, 
And sing in life or death, 
Father, Thy will be done. 

Benjamin Schmolke. 
Tr., Jane Borthwick. 



Lo, I am come to do Thy will, O God. — Heb. x. 7. 
I love the Father, and as the Father gave me com- 
mandment, even so I do. — John xiv. 31. 



ASPIRATION. 



ASPIRATION. 

As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they 
also may be in us. — Jesus. 



AS we are religious, we are in a state of aspira- 
^~^ tion and unsatisfied desire. We lie open to 
the infinite universe, and keep the vigils of the 
exposed and trustful. James Martineau. 



1\ TAN'S Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his 
Greatness ; it is because there is an Infinite 
in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite 
bury under the Finite. Thomas Carlyle. 



YX THEN your Ideal World, wherein the whole 
man has been dimly struggling and inex- 
pressibly languishing to work, becomes revealed, 
and thrown open, you discover, with amazement 
enough, that it is " here or nowhere." The situa- 
tion that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never 
yet occupied by man. Yes, here, in this poor, 



1 68 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, wherein 
thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy 
Ideal : work it out therefrom ; and working, believe, 
live, be free. Thomas Carlyle. 



n^HE problem of contentment, then, is this, — 
A to be contented with our present condition, 
whatever it may be, and yet endeavor to improve 
it and make it better : in short, not to lay much 
stress, one way or the other, on our outward posi- 
tion, but to have the fountain of contentment 
within, in a full and active soul. 

Such contentment is not sluggishness. A man 
may be contented where he is, because he is con- 
scious he is full of life, and must make progress. 

True contentment is noble. It is the perfect 
poise of a well-balanced mind ; of one who can 
wait when patience is necessary and work when 
work is timely, not daunted by failure, not elated 
by success. 

The root of discontent is self-love ; the root of 
true content is work done in love for true ends. 
True contentment is paired with a true discon- 
tent, and the one and the other lead us to the 
mercy-seat of God, and fill us more and more with 

the spirit of prayer. 

James Freeman Clarke. 



w 



ASPIRATION. 169 

HAT I aspire to be, and am not, comforts 
me. Robert Browning. 



HHHE door to any outward heaven lies through 
an inward heaven. If we do not first enter 
" the kingdom of heaven which is within us," we 
shall not enter any heaven above us or outside 
of us. James Freeman Clarke. 



THE BEGGAR. 

A BEGGAR through the world am I, — 
From place to place I wander by. 
Fill up my pilgrim's scrip for me, 
For Christ's sweet sake and charity ! 

A little of thy steadfastness, 

Rounded with leafy gracefulness, 

Old oak, give me, — 

That the world's blasts may round me blow, 

And I yield gently to and fro, 

While my stout-hearted trunk below 

And firm-set roots unshaken be. 

Some of thy stern, unyielding might, 
Enduring still through day and night 
Rude tempest-shock and withering blight, — 



170 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

That I may keep at bay 
The changeful April sky of chance 
And the strong tide of circumstance, — 
Give me, old granite gray. 

Some of thy pensiveness serene, 

Some of thy never-dying green, 

Put in this scrip of mine, — 

That griefs may fall like snow-flakes light, 

And deck me in a robe of white, 

Ready to be an angel bright, — 

sweetly mournful pine. 

A little of thy merriment, 
Of thy sparkling, light content, 
Give me, my cheerful brook, — 
That I may still be full of glee 
And gladsomeness, where'er I be, 
Though fickle fate hath prisoned me 
In some neglected nook. 

Ye have been very kind and good 
To me, since I Ve been in the wood ; 
Ye have gone nigh to fill my heart ; 
But good-by, kind friends, every one, 

1 Ve far to go ere set of sun ; 

Of all good things I would have part, 
The day was high ere I could start, 
And so my journey 's scarce begun. 

Heaven help me ! how could I forget 
To beg of thee, dear violet ! 



ASPIRATION. 171 

Some of thy modesty, 
That blossoms here as well, unseen, 
As if before the world thou 'dst been, 
Oh, give, to strengthen me. 

James Russell Lowell 



A PRAYER. 

GIRD me with the strength of thy steadfast hills ! 
The speed of thy streams give me ! 
In the spirit that calms, with the life that thrills, 
I would stand or run for thee. 
Let me be thy voice, or thy silent power, — 
As the cataract or the peak, — 
An eternal thought, in my earthly hour, 
Of the living God to speak. 

Clothe me in the rose tints of thy skies 

Upon morning summits laid ; 

Robe me in the purple and gold that flies 

Through thy shuttle of light and shade ; 

Let me rise and rejoice in thy smile aright, 

As mountains and forests do ; 

Let me welcome thy twilight and thy night 

And wait for thy dawn anew ! 

Give me of the brook's faith, joyously sung 
Under clank of its icy chain ! 
Give me of the patience that hides among 
Thy hill-tops in mist and rain ! 



1 72 LEA VES OF HEALING. 

Lift me up from the clod ; let me breathe thy breath ; 

Thy beauty and strength give me ! 

Let me lose both the name and the meaning of death 

In the life that I share with Thee ! 

Lucy Larcom. 

/^RANT, O my God, that neither joy nor sorrow 
^-* shall visit my heart in vain ! Make me wise 
and strong to the performance of immediate du- 
ties, and ripen me by what means Thou seest best 
for the performance of those that lie beyond. 

Margaret Fuller. 



NEEDED BLESSINGS. 

WE ask not that our path be always bright, 
But for Thine aid to walk therein aright ; 
That Thou, O Lord, through all its devious way 
Wilt give us strength sufficient to our day, — 
For this, for this we pray. 

Not for the fleeting joys that earth bestows, 
Not for exemption from its many woes ; 
But that, come joy or woe, come good or ill, 
With childlike faith we trust Thy guidance still, 
And do Thy holy will. 

Teach us, dear Lord, to find the latent good 
That sorrow yields, when rightly understood ; 
And for the frequent joy that crowns our days 
Help us with grateful hearts our hymns to raise, 
Of thankfulness and praise. 



ASPIRATION. 173 

Thou knowest all our needs, and wilt supply ; 
No veil of darkness hides us from Thine eye, 
Nor vainly, from the depths, on Thee we call ; 
Thy tender love, that breaks the tempter's thrall, 
Folds and encircles all. 

William H. Burleigh. 



A REVERIE IN SICKNESS. 

I FANCY I hear a whisper, 
As of leaves in a gentle air ; 
Is it wrong, I wonder, to fancy 
It may be the tree up there ? — 
The tree that heals the nations, 
Growing amidst the street, 
And dropping for who will gather 
Its healing at their feet. 

I fancy I hear a rushing 

As of waters down a slope ; 

Is it wrong, I wonder, to fancy 

It may be the river of hope ? — 

The river of crystal waters, 

That flows from the very throne, 

And runs through the street of the city, 

With a softly jubilant tone. 

I fancy a twilight round me, 
And a wandering of the breeze, 
With a hush in that high city, 
And a going in the trees. 



174 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

But I know there will be no night there, 
No coming and going day, 
For the holy face of the Father 
Will be perfect light alway. 

I could do without the darkness, 

And better without the sun ; 

But oh ! I should like a twilight, 

After the day was done ! — 

Would He lay His hand on His forehead, 

On His hair as white as wool, 

And shine one hour through His ringers, 

Till the shadow had made me cool. 

But the thought is very foolish ; 

If that face I did but see, 

All else would be forgotten, — 

River and twilight and tree ; 

I should seek, I should care, for nothing, 

Beholding His countenance ; 

And fear only to lose one glimmer 

By one single sideway glance. 

'T is again but a foolish fancy, 
To picture the countenance so, 
Which is shining in all our spirits, 
Making them white as snow. 
Come to me, shine in me, Father, 
And I care not for river or tree, 
Care for no sorrow or sighing, 
If only Thou shine in me. 



ASPIRATION. 175 

I would lie on my bed for ages, 
Looking out on the dusty street, 
Where whisper, nor leaves, nor waters, 
Nor anything cool and sweet, — 
At my heart this ghastly fainting, 
And this burning in my blood, — 
If only I knew Thou wast with me, 
Wast with me — making me good. 

George Mac Donald. 



AS some rare perfume in a vase of clay 
Pervades it with a fragrance not its own, 
So, when Thou dwellest in a mortal soul, 
All heaven's own sweetness seems around it thrown. 

Abide in me ! There have been moments blest, 

When I have heard Thy voice and felt Thy power ; 

Then evil lost its grasp; and passion, hushed, 
Owned the divine enchantment of the hour. 

These were but seasons, beautiful and rare : 

Abide in me, and they shall ever be ! 
Fulfil at once Thy precept and my prayer : 

Come, and abide in me, and I in Thee ! 

Harriet Beecher Stowe. 



FATHER, in Thy mysterious presence kneeling, 
Fain would our souls feel all Thy kindling love ; 
For we are weak, and need some deep revealing 
Of trust and strength and calmness from above. 



1/6 LEAVES OF HEALING, 

Lord, we have wandered forth through doubt and 
sorrow, 

And Thou hast made each step an onward one ; 
And we will ever trust each unknown morrow, — 

Thou wilt sustain us till its work is done. 

In the heart's depths a peace serene and holy 
Abides ; and when pain seems to have its will, 

Or we despair, oh, may that peace rise slowly, 
Stronger than agony, and we be still ! 

Now, Father, now, in Thy dear presence kneeling, 
Our spirits yearn to feel Thy kindling love : 

Now make us strong, we need Thy deep revealing 
Of trust and strength and calmness from above. 

Samuel Johnson. 



THOU Life within my life, than self more near ! 
Thou veiled Presence infinitely dear ! 
From all my nameless weariness I flee 
To find my centre and my rest in Thee. 

Take part with me against these doubts that rise, 
And seek to throne Thee far in distant skies ! 
Take part with me against this self, that dares 
Assume the burden of these sins and cares ! 

How can I call Thee who art always here, 
How shall I praise Thee who art still most dear, 
What may I give Thee, save what Thou hast given, 
And whom but Thee have I in earth or heaven ? 

Eliza Scudder. 



ASPIRATION. 177 



THROUGH all this life's eventful road, 
Fain would I walk with Thee, my God, 
And find Thy presence light around, 
And every step on holy ground. 

Each blessing would I trace to Thee, 
In every grief Thy mercy see ; 
And through the paths of duty move, 
Conscious of Thine encircling love. 

And when the angel Death stands by, 
Be this my strength that Thou art nigh ; 
And this my joy, that I shall be 
With those who dwell in light with Thee. 

William Gaskell. 



IN Thee my trust abideth, 
On Thee my hope relies, 
O Thou whose love provideth 

For all beneath the skies : 
O for a heart to love Thee 

More truly as I ought, 
And nothing place above Thee 
In deed, or word, or thought. 

My grief is in the dulness 

With which this sluggish heart 

Doth open to the fulness 
Of all Thou wouldst impart ; 

12 



178 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

My joy is in Thy beauty 

Of holiness divine, 
My comfort in the duty 

That binds my life to Thine. 

O for that choicest blessing 

Of living in Thy love, 
And thus on earth possessing 

The peace of heaven above ; 
O for the bliss that by it 

The soul securely knows ; 
The holy calm and quiet 

Of faith's serene repose. 

J. S. B. Monsell. 

WE kneel how weak, we rise how full of power. 
Why therefore should we do ourselves this 
wrong, 
Or others — that we are not always strong, 
That we are ever overborne with care, 
That we should ever weak or heartless be, 
Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, 
And joy and strength and courage are with Thee? 

Richard Chenevix Trench. 

AGAINST THE SKY. 

AGAINST the sky the elm has laid 
Her graceful branches unafraid. 
Against the sky the maples rest, 
And hold their red buds to be blessed. 



ASP IRA TION. 1 79 

Against the sky ! That is the test. 
Hold up thy soul and stand confessed 
Against the sky ! And all of earth 
Will show at once its lowly birth. 

Against the sky ! And what is fair 
Will join eternal beauty there. 
Have fellowship with Heaven, and try 
To judge thy life against the sky. 

James Freeman Clarke. 



THE BLESSED LIFE. 

O BLESSED life! the heart at rest, 
When all without tumultuous seems, 
That trusts a higher will, and deems 
That higher will, made ours, the best. 

O blessed life ! the mind that sees — 
Whatever change the years may bring — 
Some good still hid in everything, 
And shining through all mysteries. 

O blessed life ! the soul that soars, 
When sense of mortal sight is dim, 
Beyond the sense, — beyond, to Him 
Whose love unlocks the heavenly doors. 



l8o LEAVES OF HEALING. 

O blessed life ! heart, mind, and soul, 
From selfish aims and wishes free, 
In all at one with Deity, 
And loyal to the Lord's control. 

William Tidd Matson. 



That ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God. 

Ephesians iii. 19. 



THE PERFECT TRUST. 



THE PERFECT TRUST. 

The eternal God is thy dwelling place, 
And underneath are the everlasting arms. 

Deut. xxxiii. 27. 

Rest in the Lord ; wait patiently on him ; 
And he shall give thee thy heart's desire. 

Psalm xxxvii. 



THOU knowest that I am not blest 
As thou wouldst have me be, 
Till all the peace and joy of faith 
Possess my soul in Thee. 

Anna L. Waring. 



/^VNLY as we trust, do we indeed live, coming to 
^-^ be content, though we cannot fill the yawn- 
ing abysses or fathom the fathomless will, in the 
conviction that God is over all, and over all for 
good. Let us not forget that where man fails, 
there God begins, and that He, notwithstanding 
human failure, is able w T ith unutterable peace and 
blessing to bless those who put their trust in Him. 

John F. W. Ware. 



1 84 LEAVES OF HEALING, 

TT rHEN, hope as you will, you can trust every- 
thing to the Eternal, then does the peace 
that passes understanding overflow your heart with 
its ineffable serenity. And can you not trust every- 
thing to him when you consider all the ordered 
beauty and beneficence of his manifest life ? Hope 
then, dear friends, as grandly as you will, but still 
more grandly trust. John W. Chad wick. 

YT TE wrong the deepest revelations of life, when 
** we are not content to let this one little 
segment in the arc of our existence stand in its 
own simple, separate intention, whether it be glad- 
ness or gloom ; and trust surely that the full and 
perfect intention must come out in the full range 
of our being. Robert Collyer. 



QAY what we will, there is nothing stronger or 
• deeper in men than confidence in God, — a 
solemn trust that He will do us good. 

Theodore Parker. 



/r T N HERE is a sublime trust implied in calm and 
conquering cheerfulness. The soul seems to 
have such an understanding with the universe ; 
such a childlike confidence that its Father will do 
all things well. That a being so frail as man, with 



THE PERFECT TRUST 1 85 

such a destiny at stake, in a condition so grand, 
walking amid forces whose rage he is impotent to 
control — that such a one can be cheerful and 
happy shows an inborn conviction that God holds 
them all in the hollow of His hand. How sublime 
is such a trust ! Nahor Augustus Staples. 

YI TE never know through what divine mysteries 
* * of compensation the great Father of the 
universe may be carrying out His sublime plan ; 
and those three words, " God is Love," ought to 
contain, to every doubting soul, the solution of all 
things. Miss Muloch. 

A MONG the children of God, while there is 
""* always that fearful and bowed apprehension 
of His majesty, and that sacred dread of all offence 
to Him, which is called the fear of God, yet of real 
and essential fear there is not any, but clinging of 
confidence to Him as their Rock, Fortress, and 
Deliverer, and perfect love, and casting out of 
fear ; so that it is not possible that while the mind 
is rightly bent on Him there should be any dread 
of anything either earthly or supernatural; and 
the more dreadful seems the height of His majesty, 
the less fear they feel that dwell in the shadow 
of it. John Ruskin. 



1 86 LEA VES OE HEALING. 

ONE adequate support 
For the calamities of mortal life 
Exists, — one only ; an assured belief 
That the procession of our fate, howe'er 
Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being 
Of infinite benevolence and power ; 
Whose everlasting purposes embrace 
All accidents, converting them to good. 
— The darts of anguish fix not where the seat 
Of suffering hath been thoroughly fortified 
By acquiescence in the Will supreme 
For time and for eternity ; by faith, 
Faith absolute in God, including hope, 
And the defence that lies in boundless love 
Of His perfections ; with habitual dread 
Of aught unworthily conceived, endured 
Impatiently, ill-done, or left undone, 
To the dishonor of His holy name. 
Soul of our souls, and safeguard of the world ! 
Sustain, thou only canst, the sick of heart ; 
Restore their languid spirits, and recall 
Their lost affections unto Thee and Thine ! 

William Wordsworth. 

A SECOND voice was at mine ear, 
A little whisper silver-clear, 
A murmur, " Be of better cheer." 

As from some blissful neighborhood, 

A notice faintly understood, 

" I see the end, and know the good." 



THE PERFECT TRUST 1 87 

A little hint to solace woe, 

A hint, a whisper breathing low, 

" I may not speak of what I know." 

Like an ^Eolian harp that wakes 

No certain air, but overtakes 

Far thought with music that it makes : 

Such seem'd the whisper at my side : 

" What is it thou knowest, sweet voice ? " I cried. 

" A hidden hope," the voice replied : 

So heavenly-toned, that in that hour 
From out my sullen heart a power 
Broke, like the rainbow from the shower, 

To feel, altho' no tongue can prove, 
That every cloud, that spreads above 
And veileth love, itself is love. 



And forth into the fields I went, 
And Nature's living motion lent 
The pulse of hope to discontent. 



I wonder'd at the bounteous hours, 
The slow result of winter showers : 
You scarce could see the grass for flowers. 

I wonder'd, while I paced along : 

The woods were fill'd so full with song, 

There seem'd no room for sense of wrong. 



1 88 LEA VES OF HEALING. 

So variously seem'd all things wrought, 
I marvelPd how the mind was brought 
To anchor by one gloomy thought ; 

And wherefore rather I made choice 
To commune with that barren voice, 
Than him that said, " Rejoice ! rejoice ! " 

Alfred Tennyson. 



MORALITY. 

WE cannot kindle when we will 
The fire which in the heart resides ; 
The spirit bloweth and is still, 
In mystery our soul abides. 

But tasks in hours of insight will'd 
Can be through hours of gloom fulmTd. 

With aching hands and bleeding feet 
We dig and heap, lay stone on stone ; 
We bear the burden and the heat 
Of the long day, and wish 't were done. 
Not till the hours of light return, 
All we have built do we discern. 

Then, when the clouds are off the soul, 
When thou dost bask in Nature's eye, 
Ask how she viewed thy self-control, 
Thy struggling, tasked morality — 
Nature, whose free, light, cheerful air, 
Oft made thee, in thy gloom, despair. 



THE PERFECT TRUST 1 89 

And she, whose censure thou dost dread, 
Whose eye thou wast afraid to seek, 
See, on her face a glow is spread, 
A strong emotion on her cheek ! 
" Ah, child ! " she cries, " that strife divine, 
Whence was it, for it is not mine ? 

" There is no effort on my brow — 

I do not strive, I do not weep ; 

I rush with the swift spheres and glow 

In joy, and when I will, I sleep. 
Yet that severe, that earnest air, 
I saw, I felt it once — but where ? 

u I knew not yet the gauge of time, 

Nor wore the manacles of space ; 

I felt it in some other clime, 

I saw it in some other place. 

'T was when the heavenly house I trod, 
And lay upon the breast of God." 

Matthew Arnold. 



SO sometimes comes to soul and sense 
The feeling which is evidence 
That very near about us lies 
The realm of spiritual mysteries. 
The sphere of the supernal powers 
Impinges on this world of ours. 
The low and dark horizon lifts, 
To light the scenic terror shifts ; 



190 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

The breath of a diviner air 
Blows down the answer of a prayer : 
That all our sorrow, pain, and doubt 
A great compassion clasps about, 
And law and goodness, love and force, 
Are wedded fast beyond divorce. 
Then duty leaves to love its task, 
The beggar Self forgets to ask ; 
With smile of trust and folded hands, 
The passive soul in waiting stands 
To feel, as flowers the sun and dew, 
The One true Life its own renew. 

John Greenleaf Whittier. 

T^AITH must reconcile me, and you, and all men, 
A to that progress of events which is the con- 
stant, and often the unwelcome, evolution of the 
Divine will ; faith in God as absolute goodness as 
well as supreme power ; faith in a love too tender 
to be tyrannical, and too wise to be indulgent ; 
faith in God as a Father, and as my Father, — not 
mine more than others', but theirs and mine, be- 
yond denial, doubt, or a whisper of unbelief. Give 
me this faith, establish it in my understanding, 
plant it in my heart, and I shall neither tremble 
nor complain \ but will open my arms to embrace 
and take to my bosom all life's experience, change- 
ful and strange and sad and irreconcilable with 
my notions of wisdom and goodness though it 



THE PERFECT TRUST. 191 

seem to be. Let such a faith come, whence it 
may, — from the depths of my own nature de- 
manding and therefore finding it, or from the high 
heavens disclosing it in compassion for my want, 
— let such a faith come into my weary soul, and I 
will sink into a rest sweeter, a thousand times 
sweeter, than the repose of a tired child in its 
mother's arms. Open upon my spiritual sense, O 
thou vision of an infinite love, and inspire this faith 
in Him whom I call God, but who has a dearer 
name for them to use who know Him as He may 
be known ! Ezra Stiles Gannett. 

T ET us trustingly leave these matters, where, 
indeed, whether trustingly or not, we must 
leave them, — with the infinite Love which em- 
braces all our loves, and the infinite Wisdom which 
comprehends all our needs ; assured that the 
Father of the house whose mansions are many, 
and the Father of spirits whose goal is one, will 
find the right place and connections and nurture 
for every soul He has caused to be ; that in the 
eternities the thing desired will arrive at last ; that 
seeking and finding are divinely evened. Let us 
rest in the thought that life must be richer than all 
our experiences, — nay, than our fondest dreams. 

Frederic Henry Hedge. 



192 LEAVES OF HEALING. 



Behold, I make all things new f 

SO speaks to thee, heart, 
As the swift years depart 
The re-creating Voice. 
Turn not in vain regret 
To thy fond yesterdays, 
But rather forward set 
Thy face toward the untrodden ways. - 
Open thine eyes to see 
The good in store for thee, — 
New love, new thought, new service too 
For Him who daily maketh thy life new. 
Nor think that aught is lost 
Or left behind upon the silent coast 
Of thy spent years ; 
Give o'er thy faithless fears. 
Whate'er of real good — 
Of thought, or deed, or holier mood — 
Thy life hath known 
Abide th still thine own, 
And hath within significance 
Of more than Time's inheritance. 
Thy good is prophecy 
Of better still to be. 
In the future thou shalt find 
How far the Fact hath left behind 
Thy fondest Dream ; how deeper than all sense 
Or thought of thine, thy life's sure Providence ! 

Frederick L. Hosmer. 



THE PERFECT TRUST. 1 93 



\X JE make mistakes, or what we call such. The 
nature that could fall into such mistake 
exactly needs, and in the goodness of the dear 
God is given, the living of it out. And beyond 
this, I believe more, — that in the pure and pa- 
tient living of it out we come to find that we have 
fallen, not into hopeless confusion of our own wild, 
ignorant making ; but that the ringer of God has 
been at work among our lines, and that the emerg- 
ing is into His blessed order ; that He is forever 
making up for us our own undoings ; that He 
makes them up beforehand ; that He evermore 

restoreth our souls. 

Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney. 

T^HIS sorrow, which has cut down to the root, 

* has come, not as a spoiling of your life, but 

as a preparation for it. 

George Eliot. 

WE will trust God. The blank interstices 
Men take for ruins, He will build into 
With pillared marbles rare, or knit across 
With generous arches, till the fane 's complete. 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 

13 



194 LEAVES OF HEALING. 



THERE shall never be one lost good! what was, 
shall live as before, — 
On the earth the broken arcs ; in the heaven 

a perfect round. Robert Browning. 

HEART of Love ! 
Thou wilt not make of memory Hell in Heaven, 
But grant a soul, for penitential pain, 
A sweet forgetting of its stumbling steps 
Through dangerous darkness to the upper light; 
And on the brow Thou lovest Thou wilt write, 
" Wear thou no scars, but be thou pure and white." 

Ada C. Bowles. 

AND do not fear to hope. Can poet's brain 
More than the Father's heart rich good invent ? 
Each time we smell the autumn's dying scent 
We know the primrose time will come again; 
Not more we hope, nor less would soothe our pain. 
Be bounteous in thy faith, for not misspent 
Is confidence unto the Father lent ; 
Thy need is sown and rooted for His rain ; 
His thoughts are as thine own ; nor are His ways 
Other than thine, but by their loftier sense 
Of beauty infinite and love intense. 
Work on. One day, beyond all thoughts of praise, 
A sunny joy will crown thee with its rays ; 
Nor other than thy need, thy recompense. 

George Mac Donald. 



THE PERFECT TRUST 1 95 

GOD is ever present, ever felt, 
And where He vital breathes there must be joy. 
When even at last the solemn hour shall come 
And wing my mystic flight to future worlds, 
I cheerful will obey ; .there with new powers 
Will rising wonders sing. I cannot go 
Where Universal Love smiles not around : 
Sustaining all yon orbs and all their ,suns : 
From seeming evil still educing good, 
And better thence again, and better still, 
In infinite progression. But I lose 
Myself in Him, in Light Ineffable ! 
Come, then, expressive silence ! muse His praise. 

James Thomson. 



HP HE sense of the Universal is the sense of the 
A Divine everywhere. We live by faith in the 
Divine thought and purpose. Earth and stars, 
sun, sky and air, plants and animals, the dust- 
atom and man, are all significant to us by God's 
working in them. The darker providence we rest 
in Him by faith. The thing of beauty we hail with 
joy. The life of virtue, tenderness, aspiration, so 
rich in thought, blessings, praise and prayer, we 
receive as the divine pledge to man. Life be- 
comes more and more. Our relationships to atoms 
and stars, creatures and men, are sacred. Con- 
scious duties are upon us. And more than those 



196 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

duties are is God, in the divine moralities working 
the infinite work. In the faith in God, coming on 
the unseen courses of the Spirit, man in these 
scenes of outer nature, and in living and in dying, 
is comforted. God is better and greater than all 
earth's need, than all human longing, need and 
joy. Silas W. Sutton. 

TNEFFABLE is the union of man and God in 
every act of the soul. How dear, how sooth- 
ing to man, arises the idea of God, peopling the 
lonely place, effacing the scars of our mistakes and 
disappointments ! It is the doubling of the heart 
itself, — nay, the infinite enlargement of the heart 
with a power of growth to a new infinity on every 
side. It inspires in man an infallible trust. He 
has not the conviction, but the sight, that the best 
is the true, and may in that thought easily dismiss 
all particular uncertainties and fears, and adjourn 
to the sure revelation of time, the solution of his 
riddles. He is sure that his welfare is dear to the 
heart of being. He believes that he cannot escape 
from his good. The things that are really for thee 
gravitate to thee. You are running to seek your 
friend. Let your feet run, but your mind need not. 
If you do not find him will you not acquiesce that 
it is best you should not find him? for there is a 



THE PERFECT TRUST 1 97 

Power which, as it is in you, is in him also, and 
could therefore very well bring you together. You 
are preparing to go and render a service to which 
your talent and your taste invite you. Has it not 
occurred to you that you have no right to go unless 
you are equally willing to be prevented from going? 
O believe, as thou livest, that every sound that is 
spoken over the round world, which thou oughtest 
to hear, will vibrate on thine ear ! Every proverb, 
every book, every byword that belongs to thee for 
aid or comfort, surely shall come home through 
straight or winding passages. Every friend whom 
not thy fantastic will, but the great and tender 
heart in thee craveth, shall lock thee in his em- 
brace. And this because the heart in thee is the 
heart of all ; not a valve, not a wall, not an inter- 
section is there anywhere in nature, but one Life 
rolls uninterruptedly an endless circulation through 
all men, as the water of the globe is all one sea, 

and, truly seen, its tide is one. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson. 



TT came across me the other night, driving by 
moonlight through this grand and solemn Pass, 
that one might read those words, " Sorrow not even 
as others that have no hope," in an inverse sense 
to the generally received. " Sorrow not less, but 



198 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

more ! You who have hope need not fear to 
fathom the unfathomableness of your earthly loss. 
You who have hope need never seek to get rid of 
your sacred Sorrow. You may safely receive her, 
a life-long inmate of your inmost heart. There she 
will dwell, suffering nothing low or worldly to dwell 
with her. Sorrow greatly, abidingly, consciously, 
thankfully — you who have hope ! " 

The Story of William and Lucy Smith. 



'T^HE little basket, carried up among the hills, 
furnished beneath the hand of Christ an 
ample feast. And no less a marvel does God 
work with all the pure in heart who go up into 
the lonely place to meet him. Let them have but 
the poorest pilgrim's unleavened cake of sincerity 
and faith ; and when they have spread their in- 
sufficiency before God, and broken it into its 
worthlessness for his blessing to enter, they shall 
return richer than they came and gather more 
than they had brought. The smallest spiritual 
store, taken into the most retired spot, has a 
self-multiplying power; and if only used with 
holy trust, will pass the dimensions of nature and 
betray the resources of the infinite. 

James Martineau. 



THE PERFECT TRUST. 1 99 

/^\NE may calmly front the morrow in the negli- 
^-^ gency of that trust which carries God with it, 
and so hath already the whole future in the bottom 
of the heart. Ralph Waldo Emerson. 



T^OR His children struggling faithfully with the 
burden of life, His heavenly pity is ever on 
the watch ; nor does He leave them long in the 
languor of a weary mind, but comes Himself with 
the blessed inspiration that renews their strength 
as the eagle's. There is nothing true in earth or 
heaven if it be not a law of His that holy deed 
shall end in holy thought and holy love ; and pa- 
tient obedience down upon the dust mature the 
rapid wings by which to soar and gladly worship 
at heaven's gate. James Martineau. 



T17HEN a man comes to the knowledge that 
God is not far off, but nearer to his soul 
than he can be to the material world ; . . . when 
still further, feeling that God by His indwelling 
Spirit is the substance and support of his dearest 
life, the man sees the whole world illuminated, so 
that the Eternal shines everywhere through the 
temporal, and nature is only the vesture or Ian- 



200 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

guage of Spirit, and nothing is so certain as God's 
thought and providence in all things ; — and when 
such sense of the Infinite and such vision prompt 
and nourish humility and prayerfulness in the 
heart ; — then life becomes a sacrifice of thanksgiv- 
ing, and a peace which death does not threaten 
and which sorrow cannot break broods in the 
sanctuary of the soul. Thomas Starr King. 



OGOD, unseen, but ever near, 
Our blessed rest art Thou; 
And we, in love that hath no fear, 

Take refuge with Thee now. 
All soiled with dust our pilgrim feet. 

And weary with the way; 
We seek Thy shelter from the heat 
And burden of life's day. 

Oh, welcome in the wilderness 

The shadow of Thy love ; 
The stream that springs our thirst to bless, 

The manna from above ! 
Awhile beside the fount we stay 

And eat this bread of Thine, 
Then go rejoicing on our way, 

Renewed with strength divine. 

Samuel Longfellow 



THE PERFECT TRUST 201 



I LOOK to Thee in every need, 
And never look in vain ; 
I feel Thy strong and tender love, 

And all is well again : 
The thought of Thee is mightier far 
Than sin and pain and sorrow are. 

Discouraged in the work of life, 

Disheartened by its load, 
Shamed by its failures or its fears, 

I sink beside the road ; 
But let me only think of Thee, 
And then new heart springs up in me. 

Thy calmness bends serene above, 

My restlessness to still ; 
Around me flows Thy quickening life, 

To nerve my faltering will ; 
Thy presence fills my solitude ; 
Thy providence turns all to good. 

Embosomed deep in Thy dear love, 

Held in Thy law, I stand ; 
Thy hand in all things I behold, 

And all things in Thy hand ; 
Thou leadest me by unsought ways, 
And turn'st my mourning into praise. 

Samuel Longfellow. 



202 LEAVES OF HEALING. 



Lo ! amid the press, 
The whirl and hum and pressure of my day, 
I hear Thy garment's sweep, Thy seamless dress, 
And close beside my work and weariness 

Discern Thy gracious form, not far away, 
But very near, O Lord, to help and bless. 

The busy fingers fly, the eye may see 

Only the glancing needle which they hold, 

But all my life is blossoming inwardly, 

And every breath is like a litany ; 

While through each labor, like a thread of gold, 

Is woven the sweet consciousness of Thee. 

Susan Coolidge. 



FATHER, to Thee we look in all our sorrow. 
Thou art the fountain whence our healing flows ; 
Dark though the night, joy cometh with the morrow ; 
Safely they rest who on Thy love repose. 

When fond hopes fail and skies are dark before us, 
When the vain cares that vex our life increase, — 

Comes with its calm the thought that Thou art o'er us, 
And we grow quiet, folded in Thy peace. 

Nought shall affright us on Thy goodness leaning, 
Low in the heart faith singeth still her song; 

Chastened by pain we learn life's deeper meaning, 
And in our weakness Thou dost make us strong. 



THE PERFECT TRUST 203 

Patient, O heart, though heavy be thy sorrows ! 

Be not cast down, disquieted in vain ; 
Yet shalt thou praise Him when these darkened 
furrows, 
Where now He plougheth, wave with golden grain. 

Frederick L. Hosmer. 



OLOVE Divine, of all that is 
The sweetest still and best, 
Fain would I come and rest to-night 
Upon thy tender breast. 

As tired of sin as any child 

Was ever tired of play, 
When evening's hush has folded in 

The noises of the day ; 

When, just for very weariness ; 

The little one will creep 
Into the arms that have no joy 

Like holding him in sleep ; 

And looking upward to Thy face, 
So gentle, sweet, and strong 

In all its looks for those who love, 
So pitiful of wrong, 

I pray Thee turn me not away, 

For, sinful though I be, 
Thou knowest everything I need 

And all my need of Thee. 



204 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

And yet the spirit in my heart 

Says, Wherefore should I pray 
That Thou shouldst seek me with Thy love, 

Since Thou dost seek alway? 

And dost not even wait until 

I urge my steps to Thee ; 
But in the darkness of my life 

Art coming still to me, 

And still Thy love will beckon me, 

And still Thy strength will come 
In many ways to bear me up 

And bring me to my home. 

I pray not, then, because I would ; 

I pray because I must ; 
There is no meaning in my prayer 

But thankfulness and trust. 

And Thou wilt hear the thought I mean, 

And not the words I say ; 
Wilt hear the thanks among the words 

That only seem to pray ; 

And still, for all my sighs, my heart 

Has sung itself to rest, 
O Love Divine, most far and near, 

Upon Thy tender breast. 

John W. Chadwick. 



THE PERFECT TRUST 20$ 



WIEGENLIED. 

BE still and sleep, my soul ! 
Now gentle-footed Night 
In softly shadowed stole 

Holds all the day from sight. 

Why shouldst thou lie and stare 

Against the dark, and toss, 
And live again thy care, 

Thine agony and loss ? 

'T was given thee to live, 

And thou hast lived it all ; 
Let that suffice, nor give 

One thought what may befall. 

Thou hast no need to wake, 

Thou art no sentinel ; 
Love all the care will take, 

And Wisdom watcheth well. 

Weep not, think not, but rest ! 

The stars in silence roll; 
On the world's mother-breast, 

Be still and sleep, my soul ! 

Edward Rowland Sill. 



206 LEAVES OF HEALING. 



FOR His great love has compassed 
Our nature and our need ; 
We know not ; but He knoweth, 
And He will bless indeed. 

Therefore, O Heavenly Father, 

Give what is best to me ; 
And take the wants unanswered 

As offerings made to Thee. 



Anon. 



HE LEADETH ME. 

IN pastures green ? Not always ; sometimes He, 
Who knoweth best, in kindness leadeth me 
In weary ways, where heavy shadows be. 

Out of the sunshine warm and soft and bright ; — 
Out of the sunshine into darkest night : 
I oft would faint with sorrow and affright, 

Only for this — I know He holds my hand ; 
So, whether led in green or desert land, 
I trust, although I may not understand. 

And by still waters ? No, not always so ; 
Oft times the heavy tempests round me blow, 
And o'er my soul the waves and billows go. 



THE PERFECT TRUST. 20y 

But when the storm beats highest, and I cry 
Aloud for help, the Master standeth by, 
And whispers to my soul : " Lo, it is I." 

Above the tempest wild I hear Him say, 
" Beyond the darkness lies the perfect day; 
In every path of thine I lead the way." 

So whether on the hill-tops high and fair 

I dwell, or in the sunless valleys where 

The shadows lie — what matter ? He is there. 

So where He leads me I can safely go ; 
And in the blest hereafter I shall know 
Why in His wisdom He hath led me so. 

Henry H. Barry. 



BEFORE THE DAWN. 

DEAR Lord, I bring to Thee 
This life that from Thine own its being drew ; 
All I have been, all aspirations new, 

All I may ever be. 

I lay at Thy dear feet 
My past, with all its hopes and cares and needs, 
Its purposes, that failed like broken reeds, 

Its record incomplete. 



208 LEA VES OF HEALING. 

This tangled web of mine 
Wherein I find so little good or fair, 
May yet, if trusted to Thy love and care, 

Take on a light divine. 

The weary sense- of wrong, 
Which through the long, long night maintained its 

sway, 
Has vanished in the light of breaking day, 

And left instead a song. 

And "through the glass" I see 
That even my mistakes, my faults and sins, 
Have taught me how Thy comforting begins 

And shown the way to Thee. 

My future, Lord, I bring ; 
May it be purified by Thy dear love, 
Although the sacred baptism from above 

Be one of suffering. 

What harm can ever come 
To us, who know Thy love can have no end? 
Thou leadest us, an ever-present Friend, 

Unto the light of Home. 

How all these wrongs we see 
Can lead to right, I do not understand ; 
But, e'er the daylight breaks, I clasp Thy hand 

And trust myself to Thee. 

Emma E. Marean. 



THE PERFECT TRUST. 209 



G< 



tod 

Be praised for anguish, which has tried 
For beauty, which has satisfied : — 

For this world's presence, half within 
And half without me — thought and scene — 
This sense of Being and Having been. 

I thank Thee that my soul hath room 
For Thy grand world. Both guests may come - 
Beauty to soul — Body to tomb. 

I am content to be so weak. 
Put strength into the words I speak, 
And I am strong in what I seek. 

I am content to be so bare 
Before the archers, everywhere 
My wounds being stroked by heavenly air. 

I laid my soul before Thy feet, 
That Images of fair and sweet 
Should walk to other men on it. 

I am content to feel the step 
Of each pure Image ! — let those keep 
To mandragore, who care to sleep. 

I am content to touch the brink 
Of the other goblet, and I think 
My bitter drink a wholesome drink. 
14 



210 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

Because my portion was assigned 
Wholesome and bitter — Thou art kind, 
And I am blessed to my mind. 

Gifted for giving, I receive 
The maythorn, and its scent outgive. 
I grieve not that I once did grieve. 

In my large joy of sight and touch 
Beyond what others count for such, 
I am content to suffer much. 

I know — is all the mourner saith, 
Knowledge by suffering entereth ; 
And Life is perfected by Death. 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 



THE HILLS OF THE LORD. 

GOD ploughed one day with an earthquake, 
And drove His furrows deep ! 
The huddling plains upstarted, 
The hills were all a-leap ! 

But that is the mountains' secret, 

Age-hidden in their breast ; 
" God's peace is everlasting " 

Are the dream-words of their rest. 

He hath made them the haunt of beauty, 

The home elect of His grace ; 
He spreadeth His mornings on them, 

His sunsets light their face. 



THE PERFECT TRUST. 211 

The people of tired cities 

Come up to their shrines and pray * 
God freshens again within them, 

As He passes by all day. 

And lo, I have caught their secret, 

The beauty deeper than all, 
This faith, — that life's hard moments, 

When the jarring sorrows befall, 

Are but God ploughing His mountains; 

And the mountains yet shall be 
The source of His grace and freshness 

And His peace everlasting to me. 

William C. Gannett. 



HOW beautiful it is to be alive ! 
To wake each morn, as if the Maker's grace 
Did us afresh from nothingness derive, 

That we might sing, " How happy is our case ! 
How beautiful it is to be alive ! " 

Lo ! all around us His bright servants stand : 
And if with frowning brows for their disguise, 
Yet with such wells of love in their deep eyes. 

And so strong rescue hidden in their hands ! 

And ever towards man's height of nobleness 

They strive some new progression to contrive : 
Till, just as any other friend's, we press 
Death's hand ; and having died, feel none the less 
How beautiful it is to be alive ! 

Henry Septimus Sutton. 



212 LEAVES OF HEALING. 



MY PSALM. 

ALL as God wills, who wisely heeds 
To give or to withhold, 
And knoweth more of all my needs 
Than all my prayers have told ! 

Enough that blessings undeserved 
Have marked my erring track ; — 

That wheresoe'er my feet have swerved, 
His chastening turned me back ; — 

That more and more a Providence 

Of love is understood, 
Making the springs of time and sense 

Sweet with eternal good ; — 

That death seems but a covered way 

Which opens into light, 
Wherein no blinded child can stray 

Beyond the Father's sight ; — 

That care and trial seem at last, 
Through Memory's sunset air, 

Like mountain-ranges overpast, 
In purple distance fair ; — 

That all the jarring notes of life 

Seem blending in a psalm, 
And all the angles of its strife 

Slow rounding into calm. 



THE PERFECT TRUST 213 

And so the shadows fall apart, 

And so the west winds play ; 
And all the windows of my heart 

I open to the day. 

John Greenleaf Whittier. 

AS the bird trims her to the gale, 
I trim myself to the storm of time, 
I man the rudder, reef the sail, 
Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime : 
" Lowly faithful, banish fear, 
Right onward drive unharmed; 
The port, well worth the cruise, is near, 
And every wave is charmed." 

Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

BE like the bird that, halting in her flight 
Awhile, on boughs too slight, 
Feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, 

Knowing that she hath wings. 

Victor Hugo. 

QUFFERING loses its smart before genuine 
^ trust. Trust proves its strength in suffering. 
True trust is struck by suffering as the great tree 
of the forest by the storm, to be tossed, torn, and 
settled deeper in everlasting strength. The suffer- 
ing is for a little while, while the trust is trans- 
formed into eternal joy. 

Protap Chunder Mozoomdar. 



214 LEAVES OF HEALING. 



MY MOTHER'S HYMN. 

LIKE patient saint of olden time, 
With lovely face almost divine, 
So good, so beautiful and fair, 
Her very attitude a prayer ; — 
I heard her sing, so low and sweet, 
" His loving-kindness — oh, how great ! " 
Turning, beheld the sacred face, 
So full of trust and patient grace. 

" He justly claims a song from me, 
His loving-kindness, — oh, how free ! " 
Sweetly thus did run the song, 

" His loving-kindness," all day long. 
Trusting, praising, day by day, 
She sang the sweetest roundelay : 
" He near my soul has always stood, 
His loving-kindness — oh, how good ! " 

" He safely leads my soul along, 

His loving-kindness — oh, how strong ! " 

So strong to lead her on the way 

To that eternal better day, 

Where, safe at last in that blest home, — 

All care and weariness are gone, — 

She sings with rapture and surprise 

" His loving-kindness " in the skies. 



Anon. 



THE PERFECT TRUST. 215 

IN heavenly love abiding, 
No change my heart shall fear ; 
And safe is such confiding, 

For nothing changes here. 
The storm may roar without me, 

My heart may low be laid ; 
But God is round about me, 
And can 1 be dismayed ? 

Wherever He may guide me, 

No want shall turn me back ; 
My Shepherd is beside me, 

And nothing can I lack. 
His wisdom ever waketh, 

His sight is never dim ; 
He knows the way He taketh, 

And I will walk with him. 

Green pastures are before me, 

Which yet I have not seen ; 
Bright skies will soon be o'er me, 

Where darkest clouds have been. 
My hope I cannot measure, 

My path in life is free, 
My Father has my treasure, 

And He will walk with me. 

Anna L. Waring. 



2l6 LEAVES OF HEALING. 



AS the hart panteth after the water brooks, 
So panteth my soul after Thee, O God. 

My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God : 

When shall I come and appear before God ? 

O my God, my soul is cast down within me : 

Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of Thy water- 
spouts : 

All Thy waves and Thy billows are gone over me. 

Yet the Lord will command His loving-kindness in the 
daytime, 

And in the night His song shall be with me, 

Even a prayer unto the God of my life. 

O send out Thy light and Thy truth ; let them lead 
me, — 

Unto God, my exceeding joy. 

Why art thou cast down, O my soul ? 

And why art thou disquieted within me ? 

Hope thou in God : for I shall yet praise him, 

Who is the health of my countenance, and my God. 

The Psalms. 



O FATHER, I have nought to plead, 
In earth beneath or heaven above, 
But just my own exceeding need, 
And Thy exceeding love. 

Jane Fox Crewdson. 



THE PERFECT TRUST. 217 



JUST as I am, — without one plea 
Save that Thy love is seeking me, 
And that Thou bid'st me come to Thee, — 
O loving God ! I come. 

Just as I am, — and waiting not 
To rid my soul of one dark blot, 
To Thee whose love can cleanse each spot, 
O loving God ! I come. 

Just as I am, — though tossed about 
With many a conflict, many a doubt, 
Fightings within, and fears without, — 
O loving God ! I come. 

Just as I am, — Thou wilt receive, 
Wilt welcome, pardon, heal, relieve ; 
Because Thy promise I believe, 
O loving God ! I come. 

Hymns of the Spirit. 



n^HE " uncovenanted mercies of God/' — we 
desire no less ; we hope for no better. 
Those are the mercies beyond our height, beyond 
our depth, beyond our reach. We know in whom 
we have believed, and we look for that which it 
hath not entered into the heart of man to con- 
ceive. Shall God's thought be surpassed by man's 



2l8 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

thoughts? God's giving by man's asking? God's 
creation by man's imagination? No. Let us 
climb to the height of our Alpine desires ; let us 
leave them behind us and ascend the spear-pointed 
Himalayas of our aspirations ; still shall we find 
the depth of God's sapphire above us ; still shall 
we find the heavens higher than the earth, and His 
thoughts and His ways higher than our thoughts 
and our ways. 

Ah, Lord ! be Thou in all our being ; as not in 
the Sundays of our time alone, so not in the cham- 
bers of our hearts alone. We dare not think that 
Thou canst not, carest not ; that some things are 
not for Thy beholding, some questions not to be 
asked of Thee. For are we not all Thine — utterly 
Thine ? That which a man speaks not to his fel- 
low, we speak to Thee. Our very passions we 
hold up to Thee, and say, " Behold, Lord ! Think 
about us." We would not escape from our history 
by fleeing into the wilderness, by hiding our 
heads in the sands of forge tfulness, or the repent- 
ance that comes of pain, or the lethargy of hope- 
lessness. We take it, as our very life, in our hand, 
and flee with it unto Thee. Triumphant is the 
answer which thou holdest for every doubt. It 
may be we could not understand it yet, even if 
Thou didst speak it " with most miraculous organ." 



THE PERFECT TRUST. 219 

But Thou shalt at least find faith in the earth, O 
Lord, if Thou comest to look for it now, — the 
faith of ignorant but hoping children, who know 
that they do not know, and believe that Thou 
knowest. George Mac Donald. 

YI^HAT a beautiful picture ! (Psalm xxiii.) Its 
* * author felt that he, at least, had found in 
all the confusion of the world some one to guard 
and guide him. Henceforth there are to be for 
him no haunting, unsatisfied longings : " I shall 
not want." " For His name's sake," — because of 
what He is in Himself, His own goodness, — He 
guides me ever in right paths. Though my way 
be through darkest shadows, I will have no fear ; 
He knows, leads, and comforts me. However 
numerous my enemies, however helpless I seem in 
their presence, whatever adverse circumstances 
close me round, He spreads my table of supply even 
in their very presence. My head is anointed as one 
prepared for a festival. My cup of gratitude run- 
neth over. The future has no fears for me ; for- 
only goodness and mercy will follow me — attend- 
ants about my pathway — all the days of my life. 
And as a guest, I will dwell in the house of this 
mighty Helper and Friend forever. And all the 
way through is a lingering, haunting suggestion of 



220 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

plenty and peace and perfect rest. We see the 
background of " green pastures," while the floating 
cloud of the calm sky by day, and the quiet stars 
by night, are reflected in the " still waters ; " — or 
as the margin has it, the " waters of rest." 

Minot J. Savage. 

WAIT ON THE LORD. 

Wait on the Lord! Be of good courage and He 
shall streiigthen thy heart Wait, I say, on the Lord. 
Psalm xxvii. 14. 

UPON the Psalmist's word 
A Rabbin's voice is heard 
Commenting, saying 
To souls praying, 
" Ora 

Et iterwn ora; 
Veniet hora 
Qua tibi dabzlur.''' 1 

I hear a Master's speech 
The same faith teach — 
A Master dear to heart, 
Standing far apart, 
So great, so high above, 
And yet with lowly men 
Living, in toil and pain, 
In meekness and in love. 



THE PERFECT TRUST. 221 

He saith, " Ask, it shall be given; 

Seek, ye shall find in heaven ; 

Knock, it shall opened be." 

But not so sweet to know 

The Master's lips have spoken thus or so 

As my soul leaps to see 

He speaketh like to all the holy men : 

And softly comes again, 

Like an echo in my ear, 

The song of Hebrew seer, 

"Ora 

Et iterwn or a; 

Veniet hora 

Qua tibi dabitur" 

O when the soul is faint, 

When visions die, 

When life is wrecked upon complaint, 

And scattered lie 

Hope's arrows — years long, 

With purpose strong, 

Kept bound within one sheaf — 

When pain and loss and grief 

Prey on us, 

When thought and doubt and love 

Weigh on us, 

Then hear all sounds above, 

" Ora, 

Et iterum or a; 

Veniet hora 

Qua tibi dabitur." j AMES V ila Blake. 



222 LEAVES OF HEALING. 



SOMETIME, SOMEWHERE. 

UNANSWERED yet? the prayer your lips have 
pleaded 
In agony of heart these many years ? 
Doth faith begin to fail ; is hope departing, 

And think you all in vain those falling tears ? 
Say not the Father hath not heard your prayer ; 
You shall have your desire sometime, somewhere. 

Unanswered yet ? though when you first presented 
This one petition at the Father's throne, 

It seemed you could not wait the time of asking, 
So urgent was your heart to make it known. 

Though years have passed since then, do not despair, 

The Lord will answer you sometime, somewhere. 

Unanswered yet ? Nay, do not say ungranted ; 

Perhaps your part is not wholly done. 
The work began when first your prayer was uttered, 

And God will finish what He has begun. 
If you will keep the incense burning there, 
His glory you shall see sometime, somewhere. 

Unanswered yet ? Faith cannot be unanswered. 

Her feet were firmly planted on the Rock. 
Amid the wildest storms she stands undaunted, 

Nor quails before the. loudest thunder shock. 
She knows Omnipotence has heard her prayer, 
And cries " It shall be done ! — sometime, somewhere." 

Robert Browning. 



THE PERFECT TRUST 223 

IF human minds look out into the darkness 
And gather rays of truth, 't is His sight sees ; 
If human hearts do love, 't is His love loves ; 
'T is His joy joys, when joyful hearts rejoice ; 
He is eye's eye, heart's heart and being's being. 

It cannot be but grief and pain will come : 

We know not how to strive and never fail ; 

We know not how to have and not to lose ; 

There is no way to love and not to fear ; 

There is no way to love and not to feel 

The pangs of parting when seas roll between, 

Or when in vain we seek a faithless love, 

Or when — less loss — the sky-pits yawn, and friends 

Fall out of sight into their blue abyss. 

Then the One Lord takes up our weary woes 

As he takes up the isles, or steers a star. 

So wonderful his laws that he hath ways 

To cope with our great pain. 

God hath two temples — 
The infinite of starry heavens, one, 
Where shining ranks of servants throng and move 
In unimaginable multitudes 
At His command : the lowly soul 
The other, where He hath made His mercy-seat. 
One Life and Love He is through all that vast, 
From star to heart. Swifter than light 
Or thought He comes from some great sun convulsed, 
To hold a heart that it break not too far. 



224 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

He weighs it in His hand against a world ; 
It is as heavy to the Lord as all 
His suns if it the more hath need of healing. 
Praise ! Praise ! Thanksgiving ! Praise ! Amen ! 

James Vila Blake. 

A BIRTHDAY PRAYER. 

ART Thou the Life? 
To Thee, then, do I owe each beat and breath, 
And wait Thy ordering of my hour of death 
In peace or strife. 

Art Thou the Light? 
To Thee, then, in the sunshine or the cloud, 
Or in my chamber lone or in the crowd, 

I lift my sight. 

Art Thou the Truth ? 
To Thee, then, loved and craved and sought of yore, 
I consecrate my manhood, o'er and o'er, 

As erst my youth. 

Art Thou the Strong? 
To Thee, then, though the air be thick with night, 
I trust the seeming unprotected Right, 

And leave the Wrong. 

Art Thou the Wise ? 
To Thee, then, would I bring each useless care, 
And bid my soul unsay her idle prayer, 

And hush her cries. 



THE PERFECT TRUST. 225 

Art Thou the Good? 
To Thee, then, with a thirsting heart I turn, 
And at Thy fountain stand and hold my urn, 

As aye I stood. 

Forgive the call ! 

I cannot shut Thee from my sense or soul, 

I cannot lose me in the boundless whole, 

For Thou art All. 

Francis E. Abbot. 



THERE 'S a wideness in God's mercy, 
Like the wideness of the sea : 
There 's a kindness in His justice, 
Which is more than liberty. 

For the love of God is broader 
Than the measures of man's mind ; 

And the heart of the Eternal 
Is most wonderfully kind. 

If our love were but more simple, 
We should take Him at His word, 

And our lives would be all sunshine 
In the sweetness of our Lord. 

Frederick William Faber. 



GOD'S greatness flows around our incompleteness, 
Round our restlessness, His rest. 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 

*5 



226 LEAVES OF HEALING. 



THE THOUGHT OF GOD. 

ONE thought I have, my ample creed, 
So deep it is and broad, 
And equal to my every need, — 
It is the thought of God. 

Each morn unfolds some fresh surprise, 

I feast at Life's full board ; 
And rising in my inner skies 

Shines forth the thought of God. 

At night my gladness is my prayer ; 

I drop my daily load, 
And every care is pillowed there 

Upon the thought of God. 

I ask not far before to see, 

But take in trust my road ; 
Life, death, and immortality 

Are in my thought of God. 

To this their secret strength they owed 

The martyr's path who trod ; 
The fountains of their patience flowed 

From out their thought of God. 

Be still the light upon my way, 

My pilgrim staff and rod, 
My rest by night, my strength by day, 

O blessed thought of God ! 

Frederick L. Hosmer. 



THE PERFECT TRUST. 227 



I REPORT, as a man may of God's work — all's 
love, yet all's law! 

Now I lay down the judgeship he lent me. Each fac- 
ulty tasked 

To perceive him, has gained an abyss, when a dew- 
drop was asked. 

Have I knowledge ? confounded it shrivels at wisdom 
laid bare. 

Have I forethought ? how purblind, how blank, to the 
Infinite care ! 

Do I task any faculty highest to image success? 

I but open my eyes, — and perfection, no more and no 
less, 

In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen 
God 

In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and 
the clod. 

And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew 

(With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises 
it too) 

The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's All- 
Complete, 

As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to his 
feet. 

Robert Browning. 



228 LEAVES OF HEALING. 

\\ fHEN ye glorify the Lord, exalt Him as much 
as ye can ; for even yet He will far exceed : 
and when ye exalt Him, put forth all your strength 
and be not weary, for ye can never go far enough : 
there are yet greater things than these be, for we 
have seen but a few of His works. 

All the works of the Lord are good, so that a 
man cannot say, This is worse than that; for in 
time they shall all be well approved. 

Therefore praise ye the Lord with the whole 
heart. Bless the name of the Lord. 

ECCLESIASTICUS. 



When ye pray, say, Father. Jesus. 



Blessed be God, the Father of mercies and God 
of all comfort, who comforteth us in all our afflic- 
tion, that we may be able to comfort them that are 
in any affliction, through the comfort wherewith we 
ourselves are comforted of God, — 2 Cor. i. 3, 4. 



INDEX OF AUTHORS. 



Page 

Abbot, Francis E 224 

Allen, Joseph Henry 36 

Ames, Charles G 90 

Ancient Hebrew Ritual 143 

Anonymous 109,206,214 

Arnold, Edwin 63, 69, 93, 131 

Arnold, Matthew 188 

Barry, Henry H 206 

Bassi, Ugo 50 

Beecher, Henry Ward 73 

Bellows, Henry W 46, 47, 85, 156 

Bible ... 11, 23, 57, 61, 78, 81, 93, 101, 113, 117, 119, 
123, 143, 152, 155, 164, 167, 179, 183, 216, 228, 229 

Blake, James Vila 220, 223 

Bonar, Horatius 112, 114 

Borthwick, Jane 163 

Bourg, Anne du 92 

Bowles, Ada C 194 

Brooke, Stopford A 48 

Brooks, Charles T. . . 137 

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett . 54, 100, 104, 193, 209, 225 
Browning, Robert 100, 169,194, 222, 227 



232 INDEX OF AUTHORS. 

Page 

Bryant, William Cullen in 

Burleigh, William H 172 

Calthrop, Samuel R 159 

Camp, Stephen H . 11 

Canticles 123 

Carlyle, Thomas 32, 83, 127, 167 

Cary, Alice 68 

Chadwick, John W 102, 184, 203 

Channing, William Ellery 33 , 92, 101, 160 

Channing, William Henry . 129 

Chapin, Edwin H 38 

Clarke, James Freeman 168, 169, 178 

Cobbe, Frances Power 33 

Collyer, Robert 17, 18, 42, 123, 184 

Coolidge, Susan 163, 202 

Craik, Dinah Muloch . 185 

Crewdson, Jane Fox 216 

Crum, Amos 151 

Digby, Kenelm Henry 160 

D., M. L 108 

Ecclesiasticus 228 

Eliot, George 32, 33, 55, 193 

Elliott, Charlotte 163 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo ... 21, 39, 119, 196, 199, 213 

Faber, Frederick William 225 

Frothingham, Octavius Brooks 63 

Fuller, Margaret 172 

Furness, William H 155 

Gannett, Ezra Stiles . 190 

Gannett, William C 73, 97, 210 



INDEX OF AUTHORS. 233 

Page 

Gaskell, William 177 

Greg, William R 34 

Guyon, Madame 152 

Hale, Edward Everett 87 

Hedge, Frederic Henry 191 

Hemans, Felicia D 115 

Hinton, James 18 

Holland, J. G 29 

Hosmer, Frederick L 24, 71, 98, 192, 202, 226 

How, William Walsham 118 

Hugo, Victor 213 

Ingelow, Jean 37, 129, 158 

Jackson, Helen Hunt 102, 157 

Johnson, Samuel 77, 78, 175 

Jones, Jenkin Lloyd 35 

Kemble, Frances Anne 76 

King, Harriet Eleanor Hamilton 50 

King, Thomas Starr 199 

Larcom, Lucy 31, 171 

Livermore, Abiel A 24 

Longfellow, Henry Wads worth 68, 128, 136 

Longfellow, Samuel 200, 201, 217 

Lowell, James Russell . . . . 14, 26, 81, 99, 134, 169 
Lowell, Maria White 106 

Mac Donald, George 62, 148, 173, 194, 217 

Manning, Henry Edward 31 

Marean, Emma E 207 

Martineau, James 15, 32, 167, 198, 199 

Matson, William Tidd . 179 



234 INDEX OF A UTHORS. 

Page 

Merriam, George S 12,27,84 

Milton, John 34 

Monsell, J. S. B 177 

Morehouse, Daniel W 160 

Morris, Edwin . 1 50 

Mountford, William . . * 89 

Mozoomdar, Protap Chunder 213 

Munger, Theodore T 84, 85 

Neale, John Mason 117 

Newman, John Henry 40 

Parker, Theodore 13, 144, 184 

Peabody, Andrew P 125, 126, 138, 139 

Perris, Henry Woods 39, 88 

Perry, Nora 119 

Putnam, Alfred P 112 

Ruskin, John 185 

Salis, Johann Gaudenz von 68 

Savage, Minot J. . 219 

Sears, Edmund H 124 

Schmolke, Benjamin 163 

Scudder, Eliza 176 

Shipton, Anna 158 

Sill, Edward Rowland 205 

Smith, Lucy 75, 197 

Spencer, Carl 67 

Staples, Nahor Augustus 17,184 

Stowe, Harriet Beecher 175 

Sutton, Henry Septimus 30,211 

Sutton, Silas W 82, 83, 195 



INDEX OF AUTHORS. 235 

Page 

Tennyson, Alfred 30, 96, 186 

Thomas, H. W 61 

Thorn, John Hamilton 2I >45 

Thomson, James 195 

Trench, Richard Chenevix 178 

Utter, David N 89 

Vere, Aubrey de 15 

Ware, John F. W 55, 183 

Waring, Anna L 183,215 

Weiss, John 84 

Wendte, Charles W 13*72 

Whitney, Mrs. A. D. T. . . . 16, 92, 101, 128, 161, 193 
W T hittier, John Greenleaf . . 88,110,150,152,158,162, 

189, 212 

Willard, Emma Hart 91 

Williams, Theodore C 130 

Winter, William 66 

Wisdom 145 

Wood, Everett 29 

Wordsworth, William 89, 116, 186 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 



Poems with titles marked * have been taken in part. A change has 
been made in the wording of selections marked f. 

Page 

Abiding in God . . . . yy, 78, 167, 175-183, 190, 191, 

196-205, 215 

A Birthday Prayer 224 

Abraham 93 

^Absence 76 

Against the Sky 178 

*tA Message from the Dead 93 

Anne du Bourg 92 

*A Requiem 99 

Aspiration 55, 162-164, 167-180, 216-219 

Athanasia 90 

*A Year in Heaven 108 

Before the Dawn 207 

Behind and Before . 24 

Bronte, Charlotte 18 

Channing, W. H 63 

Character — its Growth and Victories . . 11-57,143-152, 

156, 199, 209-213, 222 



238 INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 

Page 

Cheerfulness 158, 184 

Come to me, Thoughts of Heaven 115 

Common Duties 29 

Communion with God 12, 14, 17, 26, 41, 45-50 

Contentment 2 3- 33> 3^, 1 168, 210 

Death of Children 73> 77, 101-107, 134 

Death's Ministry 61-78, 210, 212 

Death-sorrow Transmuted into Peace 73, 97 

Disease, as a Sign of the Coming of Keener Life . . 62 

Eternal Goodness . . . 77, j8 f 86, 89, 110-112, 143-152, 

157, 190-194, 216-229 

Eternal Life 81-89 

Experience 46-48 

Footsteps of Angels 136 

From Andrew Rykman's Prayer 162 

" A Vision of Poets 217 

" Commemoration Ode 81 

" Divided 129 

" Love and Law 223 

" tOde on Intimations of Immortality .... 116 

" Only a Curl 104 

" Saul 227 

" Terminus 213 

" The Choir Invisible 55 

" The Eternal Goodness no 

" The Flood of Years in 

" The Grave by the Lake 1 150 

" The Meeting 189 

" The Monitions of the Unseen . . . . 1 37, 158 

" The Over Soul 196 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 239 

Page 

From The Sermon in the Hospital 50 

" The Two Voices . 186 

" tThy Will be Done 158 

God Lends not, but Gives 104 

God's Angels and Teachers 12-15,211 

God Transcendent . . . .89, 194-196, 217, 225, 227, 228 

t " Good-Night ! not Good-By " 69 

Green Pastures and Still Waters 97 

Happiness and Blessedness 32 

Hard Conditions 17, 167 

He and She 131 

Heaven 33, 1 69 

He Leadeth Me 206 

t How Beautiful it is to be Alive ! 211 

Immortality , 81-119,143-148 

In Sickness . . . . 36, 173 

In Sleep 71 

Jesus . .15, 2i, 31, 40-45, 48-54, 84-87, 125, 126, 139, 220 
Job 18 

Life's Victories n~57 

Lifted Over 102 

Longing 88 

Love of God and Man 48 

Love that Surrenders 72 

Melodies on Darkened Ways 20, 73 

Morality 188 

My Dead 98 



240 INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 

Page 

My Mother's Hymn 214 

*My Psalm 212 

My soul is full of whispered song 68 

Needed Blessings 172 

No seas again shall sever 112 

Oh, for the peace that floweth as a river 114 

On his Blindness 34 

Our God a Consuming Fire 148 

Palm Sunday 42 

Paul . 24 

Peace 33-37,113-115,156,229 

Prayer .... 40-50, 178, 190, 204, 206, 220-224, 228 
Psalm XXIII 219 

Reunion of Friends . . .88,98,100,101,109-112,119,151 

Riper Judgments 11,21 

*Rocked in the cradle of the deep 91 

*Sadness and Gladness 102 

Service 17, 20, 37, 49-56, 74, 75, 7 S, 209, 229 

Sometime, Somewhere 222 

Song of the Silent Land 68 

Sorrow and Hope 197 

Spikenard 16 

Suffering and Trust 213 

Sympathy 55, 78 

The Alpine Sheep 106 

The Angel of Death 63-68 

The Battle of God 30 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 241 

Page 
The Beggar 169 

The Blessed Life 179 

The Changeling 134 

The Deserted House 96 

The Dying Scotch Woman 92 

The Family on Earth and in Heaven .... 123-140 

The Father's Will 18,42.155-164,212 

The Gathering Place 109 

*The Hills of the Lord 210 

The Ministry of Suffering it— 57, 209-211 

The Perfect Trust .... 91, 92, 93, 101-112, 117, 119, 
H3-*$z> 158-164, 173, 183-229 

The Sainted Dead 117,118 

The Silent Hours 130 

The Spiritual Body 112 

The Thought of God 226 

Unseen Realities 61, 88, 89 

Wait on the Lord -. . 220 

Wiegenlied 205 



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